01615nas a2200145   4500008004100000245005200041210005200093260001900145520117200164100002001336700002801356700002501384700001901409856004101428       2012                        eng d00aSound reception and radiation in a small insect0 aSound reception and radiation in a small insect  aNantes, France3 a<p>Insects are small; this is a fact of their life. In some contexts this is an advantage, such as insects do not injure themselves through the effects of gravity. In other contexts this is a disadvantage, especially in the context of sound production and reception. The wavelengths of sound that insects such as crickets produce and receive are several times larger than their body size. For sound production, this is particularly challenging and inefficient, as sub-wavelength radiation (size to lambda ratio&nbsp;&gt;&nbsp;1:100) requires great energy expenditure to produce sufficient sound pressure. In receiving sound, they face the reciprocal problem and are inefficient receivers. In addition,&nbsp; because of their size they cannot rely on cues other animals use to detect the direction of sound. Nonetheless, sound is extremely important to these insects as they use it for mate attraction and to evade predators. We investigate this problem by combining the technique of microscanning laser Doppler vibrometry with finite element modelling; and explain some of the biomechanical tricks a tiny tree cricket uses to overcome the disadvantages of size.</p>
1 aMhatre, Natasha1 aMontealegre-Z, Fernando1 aBalakrishnan, Rohini1 aRobert, Daniel  uhttps://bio.acousti.ca/ja/node/5799102319nas a2200181   4500008004100000245008700041210006900128520167300197653002101870653001201891653001601903653001801919100001501937700002101952700001901973700002501992856012002017       2011                        eng d00aMatching sender and receiver: poikilothermy and frequency tuning in a tree cricket0 aMatching sender and receiver poikilothermy and frequency tuning 3 a<p>Animals communicate in non-ideal and noisy conditions. The primary method they use to improve communication efficiency is sender-receiver matching: the receiver&#39;s sensory mechanism filters the impinging signal based on the expected signal. In the context of acoustic communication in crickets, such a match is made in the frequency domain. The males broadcast a mate attraction signal, the calling song, in a narrow frequency band centred on the carrier frequency (CF), and the females are most sensitive to sound close to this frequency. In tree crickets, however, the CF changes with temperature. The mechanisms used by female tree crickets to accommodate this change in CF were investigated at the behavioural and biomechanical level. At the behavioural level, female tree crickets were broadly tuned and responded equally to CFs produced within the naturally occurring range of temperatures (18 to 27&deg;C). To allow such a broad response, however, the transduction mechanisms that convert sound into mechanical and then neural signals must also have a broad response. The tympana of the female tree crickets exhibited a frequency response that was even broader than suggested by the behaviour. Their tympana vibrate with equal amplitude to frequencies spanning nearly an order of magnitude. Such a flat frequency response is unusual in biological systems and cannot be modelled as a simple mechanical system. This feature of the tree cricket auditory system not only has interesting implications for mate choice and species isolation but may also prove exciting for bio-mimetic applications such as the design of miniature low frequency microphones.</p>
10afrequency tuning10ahearing10aOecanthinae10atree crickets1 aMhatre, N.1 aBhattacharya, M.1 aRobert, Daniel1 aBalakrishnan, Rohini  uhttp://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/doi/10.1242/jeb.057612https://syndication.highwire.org/content/doi/10.1242/jeb.057612