Decision making and preferences for acoustic signals in choice situations by female crickets

Abstract

Multiple attributes usually have to be assessed when choosing a mate. Efficient choice of the best mate is complicated if the available cues are not positively correlated, as is often the case during acoustic communication. Because of varying distances of signalers, a female may be confronted with signals of diverse quality at different intensities. Here, we examined how available cues are weighted for a decision by female crickets. Two songs with different temporal patterns and/or sound intensities were presented in a choice paradigm and compared with female responses from a no-choice test. When both patterns were presented at equal intensity, preference functions became wider in choice situations compared with a no-choice paradigm. When the stimuli in two-choice tests were presented at different intensities, this effect was counteracted as preference functions became narrower compared with choice tests using stimuli of equal intensity. The weighting of intensity differences depended on pattern quality and was therefore non-linear. A simple computational model based on pattern and intensity cues reliably predicted female decisions. A comparison of processing schemes suggested that the computations for pattern recognition and directionality are performed in a network with parallel topology. However, the computational flow of information corresponded to serial processing.

Spatial release from masking in insects: contribution of peripheral directionality and central inhibition

“…This is a prerequisite for spatial unmasking, as the masker and the signal are then represented separately in two bilaterally paired neuronal networks (Doherty, 1985;Pollack, 1986;Stabel et al, 1989;Wendler, 1989;Schul et al, 1998;Römer and Krusch, 2000). Further evidence that supports this hypothesis has been provided by a recent study that examined the weighting of calling song cues for choice decisions in field crickets (Gabel et al, 2015).…”

Tolerant pattern recognition: evidence from phonotactic responses in the cricketGryllus bimaculatus(de Geer)

“…This highlights that the response to Odd chirps does not represent a general bias of the females to orient toward sound, but that females actively steer toward Odd chirps occurring during a sequence of normal song. This had not been observed before [ 25 , 27 ] and may require an additional feature to the well-described concepts of how pattern recognition and directional steering may interact [ 27 ].…”

Does the choosiness of female crickets change as they age?

“…Females reliably prefer the calls of younger males over those of older ones, regardless of their own age ( Verburgt et al, 2011 ), provided the songs are of equal amplitude. Increasing the amplitude of older male songs above those of younger male songs in choice tests can overcome this innate preference for the song characteristics of younger males, and it seems that females may be trading off the distance they need to travel against male quality, because the louder sound source will tend to be nearer ( Zhemchuzhnikov et al, 2017 ), akin to phonotactic responses to patterns of different quality and intensity in two-choice experiments ( Gabel et al, 2015 ).…”