The evolutionary origins of ritualized acoustic signals in caterpillars
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Animal communication signals can be highly elaborate, and researchers have long sought explanations for their evolutionary origins. For example, how did signals such as the tail-fan display of a peacock, a firefly flash or a wolf howl evolve? Animal communication theory holds that many signals evolved from non-signalling behaviours through the process of ritualization. Empirical evidence for ritualization is limited, as it is necessary to examine living relatives with varying degrees of signal evolution within a phylogenetic framework. We examine the origins of vibratory territorial signals in caterpillars using comparative and molecular phylogenetic methods. We show that a highly ritualized vibratory signal—anal scraping—originated from a locomotory behaviour—walking. Furthermore, comparative behavioural analysis supports the hypothesis that ritualized vibratory signals derive from physical fighting behaviours. Thus, contestants signal their opponents to avoid the cost of fighting. Our study provides experimental evidence for the origins of a complex communication signal, through the process of ritualization. Many animals communicate through gestures, some caterpillars use scraping and drumming signals to ward off unwanted neighbours. Here, Scottet al. demonstrate that "leg-like" structures used by some caterpillar species to communicate evolved from legs that their ancestors used to walk.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".