In acidic oceans, sound carries further

Darkfrog submitted, created time 3 months 1 week (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

It seems that as the oceans grow more acidic with all this atmospheric CO2, sounds begin to travel longer distances before they dissipate. Despite what one might think, this is not good news for whales and dolphins, which use sound to communicate and travel. Military sonar can already disrupt cetacean behavior as much as five hundred kilometers away. If things continue at the current rate, then by 2050, these sounds will travel 70% further in some parts of the Atlantic.

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Ultrasonic frogs show hyperacute phonotaxis to female courtship calls

kavin submitted, created time 7 months 3 weeks (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Here the authors show that before ovulation, gravid females of O. tormota emit calls that are distinct from males' advertisement calls, having higher fundamental frequencies and harmonics and shorter call duration. In the field and in a quiet, darkened indoor arena, these female calls evoke vocalizations and extraordinarily precise positive phonotaxis (a localization error of

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WFU study finds that moths mimic sounds to survive

claudia submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.wfu.edu)

In a night sky filled with hungry bats, good-tasting moths increase their chances of survival by mimicking the sounds of their bad-tasting cousins, according to a new Wake Forest University study.

To be published in the May 29 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is the first to definitively show how an animal species uses acoustic mimicry as a defensive strategy.

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