ArticleCurrent biology : CB2013
A tympanal insect ear exploits a critical oscillator for active amplification and tuning.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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13 citing papers in PubMed.
- A theoretical description of the tree cricket ear as a highly phase sensitive biomechanical interferometer.iScience · 2026Article
- The Critical Thing about the Ear's Sensory Hair Cells.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Review
- Physiological Basis of Noise-Induced Hearing Loss in a Tympanal Ear.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020Article
- Frequency doubling by activeRoyal Society open science · 2018Article
- Stay tuned: active amplification tunes tree cricket ears to track temperature-dependent song frequency.Biology letters · 2016Article
- Gating of Acoustic Transducer Channels Is Shaped by Biomechanical Filter Processes.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2016Article
- Sequential Filtering Processes Shape Feature Detection in Crickets: A Framework for Song Pattern Recognition.Frontiers in physiology · 2016Review
- Active auditory mechanics in female black‑horned tree crickets (Oecanthus nigricornis).Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2015Article
- Critical waves and the length problem of biology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015Article
- Concept of an Active Amplification Mechanism in the Infrared Organ of Pyrophilous Melanophila Beetles.Frontiers in physiology · 2015Article
- Active amplification in insect ears: mechanics, models and molecules.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2015Review
- Mechanical basis of otoacoustic emissions in tympanal hearing organs.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2014Article
- The importance of invertebrates when considering the impacts of anthropogenic noise.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2014Article
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Abstract
A dominant theme of acoustic communication is the partitioning of acoustic space into exclusive, species-specific niches to enable efficient information transfer. In insects, acoustic niche partitioning is achieved through auditory frequency filtering, brought about by the mechanical properties of their ears. The tuning of the antennal ears of mosquitoes and flies, however, arises from active amplification, a process similar to that at work in the mammalian cochlea. Yet, the presence of active amplification in the other type of insect ears--tympanal ears--has remained uncertain. Here we demonstrate the presence of active amplification and adaptive tuning in the tympanal ear of a phylogenetically basal insect, a tree cricket. We also show that the tree cricket exploits critical oscillator-like mechanics, enabling high auditory sensitivity and tuning to conspecific songs. These findings imply that sophisticated auditory mechanisms may have appeared even earlier in the evolution of hearing and acoustic communication than currently appreciated. Our findings also raise the possibility that frequency discrimination and directional hearing in tympanal systems may rely on physiological nonlinearities, in addition to mechanical properties, effectively lifting some of the physical constraints placed on insects by their small size [6] and prompting an extensive reexamination of invertebrate audition.
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