Abstract
This article reports the discovery of a new genus and three species of predaceous katydid (Insecta: Orthoptera) from Colombia and Ecuador in which males produce the highest frequency ultrasonic calling songs so far recorded from an arthropod. Male katydids sing by rubbing their wings together to attract distant females. Their song frequencies usually range from audio (5 kHz) to low ultrasonic (30 kHz). However, males of Supersonus spp. call females at 115 kHz, 125 kHz, and 150 kHz. Exceeding the human hearing range (50 Hz–20 kHz) by an order of magnitude, these insects also emit their ultrasound at unusually elevated sound pressure levels (SPL). In all three species these calls exceed 110 dB SPL rms re 20 µPa (at 15 cm). Males of Supersonus spp. have unusually reduced forewings (<0.5 mm2). Only the right wing radiates appreciable sound, the left bears the file and does not show a particular resonance. In contrast to most katydids, males of Supersonus spp. position and move their wings during sound production so that the concave aspect of the right wing, underlain by the insect dorsum, forms a contained cavity with sharp resonance. The observed high SPL at extreme carrier frequencies can be explained by wing anatomy, a resonant cavity with a membrane, and cuticle deformation.
Highlights
Various animal taxa use ultrasound (.20 kHz) from bats and cetaceans to insects
The creation of this genus is required as these insects cannot be assigned to the genus Arachnoscelis as recently shown by Montealegre-Z et al [21]. Males of these species produce unusually high ultrasonic mating calls, and here we report that male S. aequoreus emits the highest ultrasound calling carrier ever recorded in nature: 150 kHz
Using Laser Doppler Vibrometry (LDV) and high-speed video (HSV) we demonstrate that the observed extreme frequencies are produced by tiny tuned sound generator, the right wing, which approaches a monopole sound source in its efficient emission of loud ultrasonic signals
Summary
Various animal taxa use ultrasound (.20 kHz) from bats and cetaceans to insects. They use these shorter wavelengths for orientation and communication with mates and rivals [1]. Orthopterans are known for calling acoustically with many species sensitive to ultrasound [2,3,4,5,6]. Tettigoniidae (katydids) are exceptional Orthoptera in the extent to which they exploit ultrasound. Based on a survey of published sound recordings that address the presence of ultrasound, 70% of katydids call using carrier frequencies (carrier in the sense of the most intense spectral peak) beyond 20 kHz [7]. About 5% call below 10 kHz, and 25% between 10 and 19 kHz, [1,7,8,9,10,11,12]
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