Insect fossils lead scientists to the singing katydid and sounds of the Mesozoic
- Specimens from Inner Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and South Africa show the earliest insect ears and sound-producing system
- Reconstruction of singing frequencies reveals a diverse song repertoire with frequencies between 4 kHz and 16 kHz, close to the upper human limit
Around 200 million years ago, katydids, an insect group related to grasshoppers and crickets, were already singing to communicate to attract mates and hearing long-distance calls, a new study has found.
The fossils, which show the earliest insect ears and sound-producing system, are from the Late Triassic discovered in Kyrgyzstan and South Africa, as well as Middle Jurassic examples found in Inner Mongolia, China.
01:13
Perfectly preserved hadrosaurus embryo fossil discovered in China
“In ancient times, animals did not use sound as a way of communication. But as biodiversity grew, animals evolved more tactics for survival, just like an arms race,” said Xu Chunpeng, of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
“Katydids were the first to have acoustic abilities. When other animals were not able to use sounds, katydids had the upper hand, especially at night when vision is limited,” he said.
Xu is first author of a paper published on Monday by a team from China, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States in the peer-reviewed American journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our analysis shows that katydids are the earliest known animals to have evolved complex acoustic communication, acoustic niche partitioning and high-frequency musical calls,” they wrote.
“Katydids evolved complex acoustic communication, including mating signals, inter-male communication and directional hearing, at least by the Middle Jurassic.”