Bibliographic record
Abstract
Defensive sound production is widespread and highly diverse among insects, yet the specific functions and factors affecting its evolution are poorly understood. In this thesis, I have two overarching objectives. 1) I conduct a literature review on insect defence sounds and show that sounds have been reported in 12 insect orders with an enormous variety of sound-producing mechanisms, acoustic features, and proposed functions. Based on my review, I pose hypotheses and predictions to explain the diversity and evolution of sonic defences. 2) I study caterpillars of the Superfamily Bombycoidea (silk and hawk moths) to test some of these hypotheses using experimental and phylogenetic comparative methods. I do this in three stages. First, I document defensive responses of 44 species (33 previously untested), bringing the total number of tested Bombycoidea species in our database to 97. I show that 34/97 produce defence sounds. Second, I characterize different sound-producing mechanisms (clicking, chirping, whistling, and vocalizing), contributing new acoustic data for 13 previously unreported sound producers. Third, I use this information to develop and test hypotheses on how defence sounds evolved and function in Bombycoidea by mapping sound production onto a phylogeny that I constructed. Interestingly, the different sound-producing mechanisms occur in multiple distantly related groups, suggesting convergent evolution; yet, closely related species can differ in their sound-producing abilities or mechanisms. These results suggest there are important selective pressures for evolving defence sounds, and that these pressures could vary to produce different types of sounds. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, I explore possible factors to explain “why sound”. Two results stand out: body size (based on head capsules) and trade-offs with defensive secretions. I also found support for the hypothesis that short sounds (i.e., clicking and chirping) are aposematic in function because they correlate to the presence of chemical defences. Overall, this research offers valuable contributions to the study of insect defence sounds: I provide the first comprehensive review of this topic, establish a model system by characterizing sonic defences (and other responses) in Bombycoidea caterpillars, and provide support for key hypotheses on the evolutionary origins, selective pressures, and functions of these sounds.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".