A phantom ultrasonic insect chorus repels low-flying bats, but most are undeterred

Abstract

1. The acoustic environment can serve as a niche axis, structuring animal behaviour by providing or obscuring salient information. Meadow katydid choruses occupy the ultrasonic, less studied, realm of this acoustic milieu, form dense populations in some habitats, and present a potential sensory challenge to co-occurring ultrasonic-hearing animals. Aerial-hawking insectivorous bats foraging immediately over vegetation must listen for echoes of their prey and other cues amidst the chorus din.

2. We experimentally created the cacophony of a katydid chorus in a katydid-free rice paddy using an aggregation of 100 ultrasonic speakers in a 25 x 25 m grid to test the hypothesis that aerially hawking bats are averse to this noise source. We alternated between chorus-on and chorus-off hourly, and acoustically monitored bat activity and arthropod prey abundance.

3. We found that our phantom katydid chorus reduced bat activity nearest the sound source by 39.3% (95% CI: 7.8 - 60.0%...