Critical Song Features for Auditory Pattern Recognition in Crickets

Abstract

Many different invertebrate and vertebrate species use acoustic communication for pair formation. In the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus, females recognize their species-specific calling song and localize singing males by positive phonotaxis. The song pattern of males has a clear structure consisting of brief and regular pulses that are grouped into repetitive chirps. Information is thus present on a short and a long time scale. Here, we ask which structural features of the song critically determine the phonotactic performance. To this end we employed artificial neural networks to analyze a large body of behavioral data that measured females’ phonotactic behavior under systematic variation of artificially generated song patterns. In a first step we used four non-redundant descriptive temporal features to predict the female response. The model prediction showed a high correlation with the experimental results. We used this behavioral model to explore the integration of the two different time scales. Our result suggested that only an attractive pulse structure in combination with an attractive chirp structure reliably induced phonotactic behavior to signals. In a further step we investigated all feature sets, each one consisting of a different combination of eight proposed temporal features. We identified feature sets of size two, three, and four that achieve highest prediction power by using the pulse period from the short time scale plus additional information from the long time scale.

Divergent mechanisms of acoustic mate recognition between closely related field cricket species (Teleogryllus spp.)

“…The majority of known examples of acoustic species recognition in insects, and particularly crickets and other ensiferan insects, focus on temporal patterning of male advertisement songs (e.g. Ritchie, 1991;Mendelson & Shaw, 2005;Meckenhäuser, Hennig, & Nawrot Divergence in Mate Recognition Mechanisms___________________Page 14 of 34 2013; , and a longstanding assumption about the evolution of cricket calling songs is that there is unlikely to be significant variation in carrier frequency among closely related taxa, due to the mechanical constraints imposed by physical features of male forewings used in song production (Alexander, 1962). For example, neural recordings of responses to courtship song in a gryllid from the western hemisphere, Gryllus assimilis, indicate the importance of temporal song patterning compared to carrier frequency, with female auditory neurons exhibiting a broad frequency response spectrum ranging from 3.5 kHz to 14.5 kHz (Vedenina & Pollack, 2012), and early perceptual models for discrimination of acoustic signals in T. oceanicus suggested that the main frequency-based distinction this species makes is of a categorical nature, between low frequency and ultrasound (Wyttenbach, May & Hoy, 1998).…”

Time and timing in the acoustic recognition system of crickets

“…The females of both species evaluate the pulse rate on the short time scale (Figures 1A,F ) and the chirp pattern on the long time scale (Figures 1B,G ). A major difference between the two species lies in the preference for the chirp pattern (Grobe et al, 2012 ; Rothbart and Hennig, 2012a ; see also Meckenhäuser et al, 2013 ). While one species accepted chirps over a wide range of duty cycles (Figure 1B ), the other preferred chirps only over a small duty cycle range (Figure 1G ).…”

A neuromorphic approach to auditory pattern recognition in cricket phonotaxis

“…1A) in order to predict phonotactic scores available from large behavioural data sets [4]. Further, STD-filters will be implemented on the hardware.…”

“…Behavioural experiments that quantify the phonotactic behaviour of females under variation of the artificial song parameters have shown that the most important aspect is encoded in the temporal sequence of pulses and pauses on a short time scale. High phonotactic scores are typically achieved for Pulse Periods (PPs) of ∼ 40 ms [4], [5]. In the auditory system of Grillus bimaculatus, a single neuron (Ascending Neuron 1 (AN1)) relays the relevant peripheral receptor neuron input to the central brain where auditory pattern recognition is achieved by a small-sized network of ∼ 30−50 Central Brain Neurons (BNCs).…”