ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Moth wings are acoustic metamaterials.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Convergence in Coevolved Systems: A Two-Axis Filter for Biomimetic Transferability.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Moth-Wing-Inspired Multifunctional Metamaterials.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2026Article
- Comparative Biologists and Aerospace Engineers: Important Allies to Explore the Secrets of Natural Flight.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- The tymbal of a cicada: nature's sound-generating metastructure.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Preserved reptile scales retain microscopic features, revealing a new instance of convergent evolution.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Variation in echolocation call emission of Neotropical insect-eating bats in response to shifting ambient temperatures.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Bio-inspired acoustic metamaterials for traffic noise control: bridging the gap with machine learning.Communications engineering · 2025Review
- SonoNERFs: Neural Radiance Fields Applied to Biological Echolocation Systems Allow 3D Scene Reconstruction through Perceptual Prediction.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Buckling-induced sound production in the aeroelastic tymbals ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Models for resonant acoustic metasurfaces with application to moth wing ultrasound absorption.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2022Article
- Potential for identification of wild night-flying moths by remote infrared microscopy.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Moth wings as sound absorber metasurface.Proceedings. Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2022Article
- The Bright Side of the Tiger: Autofluorescence Patterns inMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- In vivo visualization of butterfly scale cell morphogenesis inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Natural sonic crystal absorber constituted of seagrass (Posidonia Oceanica) fibrous spheres.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- New lessons for stealth technology.Nature materials · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Metamaterials assemble multiple subwavelength elements to create structures with extraordinary physical properties (1-4). Optical metamaterials are rare in nature and no natural acoustic metamaterials are known. Here, we reveal that the intricate scale layer on moth wings forms a metamaterial ultrasound absorber (peak absorption = 72% of sound intensity at 78 kHz) that is 111 times thinner than the longest absorbed wavelength. Individual scales act as resonant (5) unit cells that are linked via a shared wing membrane to form this metamaterial, and collectively they generate hard-to-attain broadband deep-subwavelength absorption. Their collective absorption exceeds the sum of their individual contributions. This sound absorber provides moth wings with acoustic camouflage (6) against echolocating bats. It combines broadband absorption of all frequencies used by bats with light and ultrathin structures that meet aerodynamic constraints on wing weight and thickness. The morphological implementation seen in this evolved acoustic metamaterial reveals enticing ways to design high-performance noise mitigation devices.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.