Main description:

This volume provides a comprehensive selection of recent studies addressing insect hearing and acoustic communication. The variety of signalling behaviours and hearing organs makes insects highly suitable animals for exploring and analysing signal generation and hearing in the context of neural processing, ecology, evolution and genetics. Across a variety of hearing species like moths, crickets, bush-crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and flies, the leading researchers in the field cover recent scientific progress and address key points in current research, such as: - How can we approach the evolution of hearing in insects and what is the developmental and neural origin of the auditory organs? - How are hearing and sound production embedded in the natural lifestyle of the animals, allowing intraspecific communication but also predator avoidance and even predation? - What are the functional properties of hearing organs and how are they achieved at the molecular, biophysical and neural levels? - What are the neural mechanisms of central auditory processing and signal generation?
The book is intended for students and researchers both inside and outside of the fascinating field of bioacoustics and aims to foster understanding of hearing and acoustic communication in insects.

Contents:

1 Introduction

Berthold. Hedwig

2 Evolutionary and Phylogenetic Origins of Tympanal Hearing Organs in Insects

Johannes Strauss and Reinhard Lakes-Harlan

3 Hearing and Sensory Ecology of Acoustic Communication in Bladder Grasshoppers

Heiner Roemer, Adam R. Smith, and Moira van Staaden

4 Auditory Parasitoid Flies Exploiting Acoustic Communication of Insects

Berthold Hedwig and Daniel Robert

5 Adaptive Sounds and Silences: Acoustic Anti-Predator Strategies in Insects

William E. Conner

6 Acoustic Communication in the Nocturnal Lepidoptera

Michael D. Greenfield

7 Cicada Acoustic Communication

Paulo J. Fonseca

8 Towards an Understanding of the Neural Basis of Acoustic Communication in Crickets

Berthold Hedwig

9 Neural Processing in the Bush-Cricket Auditory Pathway

Andreas Stumpner and Manuela Nowotny

10 Evolution of Call Patterns and Pattern Recognition Mechanisms in Neoconocephalus Katydids

Johannes Schul, Sarah L. Bush, and Katy H. Frederick

11 Processing of Species-Specific Signals in the Auditory Pathway of Grasshoppers

Bernhard Ronacher

12 Sound Communication in Drosophila

Damiano Zanini, Barth Geurten, Christian Spalthoff, and Martin C. Goepfert