Meeting Abstract
Model system choice can be arbitrary and yet has a profound effect on what is considered ‘textbook behavior’. Traditionally, field crickets have been the textbook model system in insect acoustic-communication research; in behavior, neurobiology, or indeed, sensory biophysics. Tree crickets are a very similar group that also use sound for mate attraction. My recent work on their auditory biophysics has not strayed phylogenetically far from the ‘textbook model’; I have only changed subfamilies from the Gryllinae to the Oecanthinae. Yet it turns out that tree cricket hearing is quite different. Field crickets use resonant mechanical tuning as a filter for conspecific sound and are mechanically linear. Tree cricket ears are very different: they are not mechanically tuned, instead they use a physiological mechanism that actively amplifies a selected range of frequencies. This amplification mechanism renders their hearing highly non-linear, and provides an unusual level of flexibility. For instance, their auditory sensitivity changes depending on the loudness of sound, and even in the presence of other sounds of different frequencies. The frequency selectivity of this amplification mechanism changes with temperature and it can even be turned ‘on’ and ‘off’ for extended periods of time. In my talk, I will describe some of the interesting biophysics and biomechanics that underlies this auditory system. But mainly I hope to highlight that tree-crickets are only one new model system, from a very diverse group of acoustically and seismically communicating invertebrates, all of which hold out great potential for further rewriting the textbook on communication systems.
