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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on February 24, 2009
Behavioral Ecology 2009 20(3):484-489; doi:10.1093/beheco/arp022
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Modeling the role of competition and cooperation in the evolution of katydid acoustic synchrony

Vivek Nityananda and Rohini Balakrishnan

Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India

Address correspondence to B. Rohini. E-mail: rohini{at}ces.iisc.ernet.in.


  Abstract

The precise timing of individual signals in response to those of signaling neighbors is seen in many animal species. Synchrony is the most striking of the resultant timing patterns. One of the best examples of acoustic synchrony is in katydid choruses where males produce chirps with a high degree of temporal overlap. Cooperative hypotheses that speculate on the evolutionary origins of acoustic synchrony include the preservation of the species-specific call pattern, reduced predation risks, and increased call intensity. An alternative suggestion is that synchrony evolved as an epiphenomenon of competition between males in response to a female preference for chirps that lead other chirps. Previous models investigating the evolutionary origins of synchrony focused only on intrasexual competitive interactions. We investigated both competitive and cooperative hypotheses for the evolution of synchrony in the katydid Mecopoda "Chirper" using physiologically and ecologically realistic simulation models incorporating the natural variation in call features, ecology, female preferences, and spacing patterns, specifically aggregation. We found that although a female preference for leading chirps enables synchronous males to have some selective advantage, it is the female preference for the increased intensity of aggregations of synchronous males that enables synchrony to evolve as an evolutionarily stable strategy.

Key words: acoustic synchrony, competition, cooperation, katydid, Mecopoda, simulation.

Received 26 June 2008; revised 24 December 2008; accepted 14 January 2009.


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