Transmission of the frequency components of the vibrational signal of the glassy-winged sharpshooter, Homalodisca vitripennis, within and between grapevines

Abstract

The agricultural pest, Homalodisca vitripennis , relies on vibrational communication through plants for species identification, location, and courtship. Their vibrational signal exhibits a dominant frequency between 80 and 120 Hz, with higher frequency, lower intensity harmonics occurring approximately every 100 Hz. However, previous research revealed that not all harmonics are recorded in every signal. Therefore, how the female H. vitripennis vibrational signal changes as it travels through the plant was investigated. Results confirmed that transmission was a bending wave, with decreased signal intensity for increasing distance from the source; moreover, at distances of 50 cm, higher frequencies traveled faster than lower frequencies, suggesting that dispersion of H. vitripennis signal components may enable signaling partners to encode distance. Finally, H. vitripennis generates no detectable airborne signal (pressure wave), yet their low vibrational frequency components are detectable in neighboring plants as a result of leaf-to-air-to-leaf propagation. For instance, with isolated key female signal frequencies, 100 Hz was detected at a 10 cm gap between leaves, whereas 600 Hz was detectable only with a 0.1 cm gap. Together, these results highlight the complexity of vibration propagation in plants and suggest the possibility of the animals using the harmonic content to determine distance to the signaling H. vitripennis source. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s00359-019-01366-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Hay meadow vibroscape and interactions within insect vibrational community

“…Spatial differences in vibroscape composition resulted from unique VSTs recorded only in one plant species and in the abundance of recorded vibrations (see Table S3 ). In hay meadows, where vegetation is dense and closely interconnected (see Figure S5 ), the active space of vibrational signals is not limited to the plant on which an animal is signaling but extends to neighboring plants connected by roots and touching leaves and even across a several-centimeter-wide air gap between overlapping leaves ( Čokl and Virant-Doberlet, 2003 ; Eriksson et al., 2011 ; Mazzoni et al., 2014 ; Gordon et al., 2019 ). A random distribution of plants within the grassland habitat, together with differences in plant geometries and heterogeneity of plant substrates that strongly affect damping and selective frequency filtering, result in unpredictable size and shape of the active space of vibrational signals ( Cocroft and Rodríguez, 2005 ; Šturm et al., 2019 ; Virant-Doberlet et al., 2019 ).…”

Vibrational calling signals improve the efficacy of pheromone traps to capture the brown marmorated stink bug

“…Besides semiochemicals, a new term, semiophysicals, has been recently coined (Nieri et al 2021) to indicate the use of physical stimuli (e.g., lights, sounds, and vibrations) to interfere with pest behaviors. In particular, the use of substrate-borne vibrations for behavioral manipulation has been the object of conspicuous investigation in the last decade (e.g., Eriksson et al 2012;Laumann et al 2018;Krugner and Gordon 2018;Gordon et al 2019;Mazzoni et al 2019;Dias et al 2021). Thanks to such studies, Communicated by Donald Weber. the potential for pest insect control methods employing this communication modality is becoming evident (Polajnar et al 2015).…”

Vibrational and Acoustic Communication in Animals

“…It also follows that every act of communication establishes-at least potentially-a complex communicational network in the realm of the "acousto-vibro-activespace," whereby the active space for vibrational signals can be surprisingly wide, even bridging air gaps (Fig. 11.9;Virant-Doberlet et al 2014; Mazzoni et al 2014;Gordon et al 2019). On an ecosystems level, we have begun to think of, and to study, a whole complex multilevel vibroscape (Šturm et al 2021).…”