By Susan Milius
A series of staged insect spats reveals the first known acoustic duels of caterpillars.
Larvae of the hook-tip moth, a common resident of birch and alder trees in the northeastern United States, spin silk stitches to create folded-leaf retreats, explains Jane Yack of Cornell University. Should another caterpillar have the impertinence to wriggle too near the masterpiece, an exchange of leaf-scraping and drumming breaks out. The insects use the drumming–so loud a person can detect it several meters away–to compete for territory without violence, Yack and her colleagues report in the Sept. 25 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.