Bridging biotremology and chemical ecology: a new terminology.

Living organisms use both chemical and mechanical stimuli to survive in their environment. Substrate-borne vibrations play a significant role in mediating behaviors in animals and inducing physiological responses in plants, leading to the emergence of the discipline of biotremology. Biotremology is experiencing rapid growth both in fundamental research and in applications like pest control, drawing attention from diverse audiences.

Biotremology: Have a look and find something wonderful!

A new study has provided a major advance in understanding courtship communication in Drosophila, arguably the world's best known model organism, by experimentally defining the complete pathway, step by step, from a male's vibrational courtship signal to perception in the female's brain.

Biotremology: We Fight for Food.

A new study shines light on an already well-known and mutually beneficial association between ants and the acacia tree. For the first time in this system, plant-borne vibrations introduced by foraging browsers are confirmed as the cue that directs ants to attack the attacker.

Biotremology: The Sound of One Egg Cracking.

In many animals, eggs within a clutch emerge more or less at the same time. A new study identifies vibrations of eggs cracking open as the cue that triggers synchronous emergence in an insect.

Biotremology.

Animal communication, including that among humans, is fascinating in its efficiency, diversity and its complexity. The evolution of a communication signal requires that the encoded content sent by an organism (sender) is detected and decoded by a receiver, who then must respond in such a way that the fitness of the sender is increased. The signal could be visual, such as bright coloration or some stereotypical movement that attracts attention through the sense of sight.

Animal communication: he's giving me good vibrations.

A unique bioassay allows a substrate-borne vibration signal to be isolated and manipulated to test its role in eliciting female mate choice, which may be driving a speciation event, by a live, unrestrained male.

Honey Bee Location- and Time-Linked Memory Use in Novel Foraging Situations: Floral Color Dependency.

Learning facilitates behavioral plasticity, leading to higher success rates when foraging. However, memory is of decreasing value with changes brought about by moving to novel resource locations or activity at different times of the day. These premises suggest a foraging model with location- and time-linked memory.

Nectar quality perception by honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica).

In exploring how foragers perceive rewards, we often find that well-motivated individuals are not too choosy and unmotivated individuals are unreliable and inconsistent. Nevertheless, when given a choice we see that individuals can clearly distinguish between rewards. Here we develop the logic of using responses to two-choice problems as a derivative function of perceived reward, and utilize this model to examine honey bee perception of nectar quality.

How do animals use substrate-borne vibrations as an information source?

Animal communication is a dynamic field that promotes cross-disciplinary study of the complex mechanisms of sending and receiving signals, the neurobiology of signal detection and processing, and the behaviors of animals creating and responding to encoded messages. Alongside visual signals, songs, or pheromones exists another major communication channel that has been rather neglected until recent decades: substrate-borne vibration. Vibrations carried in the substrate are considered to provide a very old and apparently ubiquitous communication channel that is used alone or in combination with other information channels in multimodal signaling.

Hearing and spatial behavior in Gryllotalpa major Saussure (Orthoptera: Gryllotalpidae).

The prairie mole cricket (Gryllotalpa major Saussure) is a rare orthopteran insect of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem of the south central USA. Populations are known to currently occupy fragmented prairie sites in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri, including The Nature Conservancy's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in north central Oklahoma. Prairie mole cricket populations were surveyed at this site and at another site in Craig County, OK during the spring of 2005 and 2006, using the male cricket's acoustic call to locate advertising aggregations of males.