Neotropical tiger moths (Erebidae: Arctiinae) have repeatedly evolved anti-bat sonar jamming

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

3:06 PM – 3:18 PM PT

Location: Vancouver Convention Centre, Meeting Room 217/218/219

Presenting Author(s)

Nicolas J. Dowdy

Head of Zoology
Milwaukee Public Museum
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Co-Author(s)

AL

Alan R. Lemmon

Associate Professor
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
EL

Emily M. Lemmon

Associate Professor
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida
WC

William Conner

Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Jennifer Zaspel

Associate Curator and Head of Zoology
Milwaukee Public Museum
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

It has been over a decade since laboratory experiments demonstrated that tiger moths (Erebidae: Arctiinae), specifically Bertholdia trigona (Grote, 1879), are capable of thwarting bat predation by disrupting, or "jamming" bat sonar. How widespread this unique anti-predator defense is and its evolutionary origins have remained a mystery. To answer these questions, we use phylogenomics to resolve a nearly complete genus-level phylogeny of the subtribes Phaegopterina (~175 genera; >1800 species) and Pericopina (~41 genera; >360 species). Using both direct observations and museum specimen-based morphometric inference, we characterize the acoustic behaviors for hundreds of taxa. Our results support the hypothesis that sonar jamming has independently evolved numerous times from aposematic origins within this diverse clade of neotropical moths.