title: Double meaning of courtship song in a moth.
abstract: Males use courtship signals to inform a conspecific female of their presence and/or quality, or, alternatively, to 'cheat' females by imitating the cues of a prey or predator. These signals have the single function of advertising for mating. Here, we show the dual functions of the courtship song in the yellow peach moth, Conogethes punctiferalis, whose males generate a series of short pulses and a subsequent long pulse in a song bout. Repulsive short pulses mimic the echolocation calls of sympatric horseshoe bats and disrupt the approach of male rivals to a female. The attractive long pulse does not mimic bat calls and specifically induces mate acceptance in the female, who raises her wings to facilitate copulation. These results demonstrate that moths can evolve both attractive acoustic signals and repulsive ones from cues that were originally used to identify predators and non-predators, because the bat-like sounds disrupt rivals, and also support a hypothesis of signal evolution via receiver bias in moth acoustic communication that was driven by the initial evolution of hearing to perceive echolocating bat predators.
authors.affiliation: Breeding and Pest Management Division, Institute of Fruit Tree Science, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, 2-1 Fujimoto, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8605, Japan rnakano@affrc.go.jp.
authors.forename: Ryo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nakano
authors.affiliation: Breeding and Pest Management Division, Institute of Fruit Tree Science, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, 2-1 Fujimoto, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8605, Japan.
authors.forename: Fumio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ihara
authors.affiliation: Breeding and Pest Management Division, Institute of Fruit Tree Science, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, 2-1 Fujimoto, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8605, Japan.
authors.forename: Koji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mishiro
authors.affiliation: Grape and Persimmon Research Division, Institute of Fruit Tree Science, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, 301-2 Mitsu, Akitsu, Higashi-hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-2494, Japan.
authors.forename: Masatoshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Toyama
authors.affiliation: Breeding and Pest Management Division, Institute of Fruit Tree Science, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, 2-1 Fujimoto, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8605, Japan.
authors.forename: Satoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Toda
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003380:Courtship; D005260:Female; D005426:Flight, Animal; D008297:Male; D009036:Moths / Q000502:physiology*; D012724:Sex Attractants / Q000378:metabolism; D012726:Sexual Behavior, Animal; D014828:Vocalization, Animal; D014921:Wings, Animal / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D012724:Sex Attractants
keywords: acoustic communication; bat; courtship song; moth