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Sand-Borne Vibrations in Prey Detection and Orientation of Antlions

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Studying Vibrational Communication

Part of the book series: Animal Signals and Communication ((ANISIGCOM,volume 3))

Abstract

Pit-building antlions capture their prey by digging funnel-shaped pits in loose sand and then laying in wait for prey to fall inside the trap. Behavioral experiments studying predator–prey interactions and measurements of vibrations propagated in sandy substrates revealed that antlions are extremely sensitive to substrate vibrations produced by prey crawling on the sand surface. Prey produce low-frequency sand-borne vibrations, and to locate a source of vibration, antlions rely on time differences of waveforms arriving at their receptors—tufts of hairs positioned on lateral parts of the mesothorax and metathorax. In this chapter, the role of physical properties of sand in substrate-borne vibration transmission is discussed.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Professor A. Čokl for helpful suggestions on an early version of the manuscript. This project was supported by the Slovene Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology within the Biodiversity Research Programme (Grant No. P1-0078).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Maribor, Koroška 160, 2000, Maribor, Slovenia

    Dušan Devetak

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  1. Dušan Devetak
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Correspondence to Dušan Devetak .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, Missouri, USA

    Reginald B. Cocroft

  2. Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Matija Gogala

  3. Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

    Peggy S.M. Hill

  4. Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany

    Andreas Wessel

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Devetak, D. (2014). Sand-Borne Vibrations in Prey Detection and Orientation of Antlions. In: Cocroft, R., Gogala, M., Hill, P., Wessel, A. (eds) Studying Vibrational Communication. Animal Signals and Communication, vol 3. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-43607-3_16

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