Researchers found luna moths use their signature long tails to ward off attacks from predatory bats.
For years scientists have wondered if these moths' unusually long tails were actually some sort of defense mechanism, but the answer hasn't been clear until now, Phys.org reported.
"Bats and moths have been engaged in acoustic warfare for more than 60 million [years]. Yet almost half of moth species lack bat-detecting ears and still face intense bat predation. We hypothesized that the long tails of one group of seemingly defenseless moths, saturniids, are an anti-bat strategy designed to divert bat attacks," the researchers wrote in their study abstract.
To make their findings the team of researchers gathered 162 moths and pulled the tails off of 75 of them. The scientists then tied the moths to a ceiling in the lab and released a brown bat into the room to determine how resilient they were against attacks. The team observed that the bats were able to catch 85 percent of the moths with no tails, but only 35 percent of the ones that still had theirs; this suggests the moths' tails are a key defense against bat attacks.
The researchers filmed the moth experiments using high speed cameras and found over half the time the bats went for the moths' tails when attacking, often resulting in a torn tail and a quick escape. The team believes the swirling motion of the tails interferes with the bats' echolocation, causing them to confuse the tails with the beating wings of other prey.
"Using a robust phylogeny, we find that long spatulate tails have independently evolved four times in saturniid moths, further supporting the selective advantage of this anti-bat strategy. Diversionary tactics are perhaps more common than appreciated in predator-prey interactions. Our finding suggests that focusing on the sensory ecologies of key predators will reveal such countermeasures in prey," the researchers concluded in their study abstract.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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