In this chapter in the book ‘Biotremology: Studying Vibrational Behavior’ we introduced for the first time the concept of vibroscape, as well as vibrational community. Characterization of vibrational environment that takes into account more than one point of registration and is carried out over longer time imposes substantial technical and logistic constraints associated with field recordings. We shared the experiences obtained during our vibroscape study, from the planning of the field work, to choosing the equipment, carrying out the field recordings and analyses in order to stimulate similar work in other research groups.
COBISS.SI-ID: 5243471
The mechanism of orientation of insects towards the source of vibrational signals remains one of the key open questions for understanding how small animals can extract information faint substrate vibrations. Combining different experimental approaches in the model species, southern green stink bug Nezara viridula - (a) analyzing which signal parameter (amplitude or time day) reflects signal source direction, (b) behavioural and (c) neurobiological experiments - we discovered that stink bugs are capable of detecting less than 0.5 ms delay between excitation of two legs and use this parameter for an accurate directional decision on a stem-leaf crossing. In contrast, on plants vibration amplitude often guides away from the source of vibrations. These findings enable searching for analogies with human hearing and understanding the evolution of sensory systems which have to function within physical constraints.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33712601
Due to human perceptional bias in favour of air-borne sounds, substrate-borne vibrational signalling has been traditionally regarded as a highly specialized, inherently short-range and, consequently, a private communication channel, free from eavesdropping by predators. In this review, we synthesized current knowledge pertinent to the view that most animals live in a rich vibratory world, where vibrational information is available to unintended receivers. We included the results on meadow vibroscape and showed that spider webs attached to several plants enable the resident spider to eavesdrop on vibrational signals emitted by their potential prey signalling on these plants. Viewing vibrational communication in more relevant ecological context reveals that animals relying on substrate vibrations live in complex communication networks. Long evolutionary history of this communication channel is reflected in varied and sophisticated predator-prey interactions guided by substrate-borne vibrations. It is likely that eavesdropping and exploitation of vibrational signals are major drivers in the evolution taking place in the vibratory world.
COBISS.SI-ID: 5089871
We investigated whether the production, transmission, and possible perception of plant-borne vibrational cues is affected by variation in leaf traits. We recorded vibrations on four plant species that differed widely in their leaf traits (cabbage, beetroot, sunflower, and corn). Our results reveal that species-specific leaf traits can influence transmission Experimentally-induced vibrations attenuated stronger on plants with thicker leaves. Furthermore, we found a significant effect of leaf area, water content and leaf thickness on the vibrations induced by airborne noise. On larger leaves higher amplitude vibrations were induced, whereas on thicker leaves containing more water airborne noise induced higher peak frequencies.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30902531
In this chapter in the book ‘Biotremology: Studying Vibrational Behavior’ we proposed guidelines how to approach a design of a system for automated recognition of vibrational signals. Characterisation of the vibroscape is also associated with a large amount of raw data. In comparison with automated recognition of air-borne sounds, automated identification of vibrational signals lags far behind, because the automated recognition of vibrational signals registered in the natural vibrational environment is inherently more challenging, due to unpredictable degradation of vibrational signals during the transmission, high level of abiotic vibrational noise overlapping the frequency range of vibrational signals, huge number of species emitting vibrational signals, complex species- and sex-specific vibrational repertoires and the absence of reference libraries. Besides tackling practical issues, we also provide a comprehensive review of the work related to this topic, as well suggestions for further studies.
COBISS.SI-ID: 5243727