Fernando Montealegre-Z

Fernando Montealegre-Z
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Fernando verified their affiliation via an institutional email.
  • Ph.D. 2005, University of Toronto
  • Professor at University of Lincoln

About

114
Publications
55,924
Reads
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1,820
Citations
Current institution
University of Lincoln
Current position
  • Professor
Additional affiliations
September 2012 - December 2017
University of Lincoln
Position
  • Professor
September 2015 - May 2016
University of Lincoln
Position
  • Reader (Associate Professor)

Publications

Publications (114)
Article
Full-text available
Crickets have two tympanal membranes on the tibiae of each foreleg. Among several field cricket species of the genus Gryllus (Gryllinae), the posterior tympanal membrane (PTM) is significantly larger than the anterior membrane (ATM). Laser Doppler vibrometric measurements have shown that the smaller ATM does not respond as much as the PTM to sound....
Article
Full-text available
Male crickets produce stridulatory songs using engaged tegmina (forewings): a plectrum on the left sweeps along a tooth row on the right. During stridulation, the plectrum moves across the teeth and vibrations are amplified by the surrounding cells and veins, resonating at the frequency of tooth impacts. The advance of the plectrum on the file is c...
Article
Male katydids (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) produce mating calls by rubbing the wings together, using specialized structures in their forewings (stridulatory file, scraper and mirror). A large proportion of species (ca. 66%) reported in the literature produces ultrasonic signals as principal output. Relationships among body size, generator structures...
Article
Full-text available
To examine whether sound production in katydids relies on an escapement mechanism similar to that of crickets we investigated the functional anatomy and mechanical properties of the stridulatory apparatus in the katydid Panacanthus pallicornis. Males of this species produce sustained pulses with a sharp low frequency peak of approximately approxima...
Article
The calling song of an undescribed Meconematinae katydid (Tettigoniidae) from South America consists of trains of short, separated pure-tone sound pulses at 129 kHz (the highest calling note produced by an Arthropod). Paradoxically, these extremely high-frequency sound waves are produced by a low-velocity movement of the stridulatory forewings. Sou...
Article
Full-text available
Katydids employ acoustic signals to communicate with others of their species and have evolved to generate sounds by coupling the anatomical structures of their forewings. However, some species have evolved to implement an additional resonance mechanism that enhances the transmission and sound pressure of the acoustic signals produced by the primary...
Article
Full-text available
Male crickets sing to attract females for mating. Sound is produced by tegminal stridulation, where one wing bears a plectrum and the other a wing vein modified with cuticular teeth. The carrier frequency (fc) of the call is dictated by the wing resonance and the rate of tooth strikes. Therefore, the fc varies across species due to the size of the...
Article
Full-text available
Mammalian hearing operates on three basic steps: 1) sound capturing, 2) impedance conversion, and 3) frequency analysis. While these canonical steps are vital for acoustic communication and survival in mammals, they are not unique to them. An equivalent mechanism has been described for katydids (Insecta), and it is unique to this group among invert...
Article
Full-text available
Hearing loss is not unique to humans and is experienced by all animals in the face of wild and eclectic differences in ear morphology. Here, we exploited the high throughput and accessible tympanal ear of the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria to rigorously quantify changes in the auditory systemdue to noise exposure and age. In this exploratory...
Article
Full-text available
Stridulation is used by male katydids to produce sound via the rubbing together of their specialised forewings, either by sustained or interrupted sweeps of the file producing different tones and call structures. There are many species of Orthoptera that remain undescribed and their acoustic signals are unknown. This study aims to measure and quant...
Article
Full-text available
Article An Eocene insect could hear conspecific ultrasounds and bat echolocation Graphical abstract Highlights d A 44-million-year-old amber fossil katydid reveals exquisite ear preservation d Biophysics of wings reveals this species utilized ultrasounds for communication d Modeling of auditory range demonstrates tuning to male sexual signal, as we...
Article
Full-text available
Resilin is an extremely efficient elastic protein found in the moving parts of insects. Despite many years of resilin research, we are still only just starting to understand its diversity, native structures, and functions. Understanding differences in resilin structure and diversity could lead to the development of bioinspired elastic polymers, wit...
Preprint
Full-text available
Insect cuticle is an evolutionary-malleable exoskeleton that has specialised for various functions. Insects that detect the pressure component of sound bear specialised sound-capturing tympani evolved from cuticular thinning. Whilst the outer layer of insect cuticle is composed of non-living chitin, its mechanical properties change during developme...
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of this study is to examine and to compare the ionic composition of the haemolymph and the ear fluid of seven species of katydids (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) with the aim of providing from a biochemical perspective a preliminary assessment for an insect liquid contained in the auditory organ of katydids with a hearing mechanism reminisc...
Article
Full-text available
This study focuses on the genus Dioncomena and its acoustics, particularly the unique songs produced by male Dioncomena that consist of several distinct elements in a fixed sequence, culminating in a coda that typically elicits a response from a receptive fe- male. We also examine the inflated pronotal lobes, which we term prebullae, that are promi...
Article
Full-text available
Katydids produce sound for signaling and communication by stridulation of the tegmina. Unlike crickets, most katydids are known to sing at ultrasonic frequencies. This has drawn interest in the investigation of the biophysics of ultrasonic sound production, detection, evolution, and ecology (including predator–prey interactions) of these katydids....
Article
Full-text available
Bush-crickets have dual-input, tympanal ears located in the tibia of their forelegs. The sound will first of all reach the external sides of the tympana, before arriving at the internal sides through the bush-cricket's ear canal, the acoustic trachea (AT), with a phase lapse and pressure gain. It has been shown that for many bush-crickets, the AT h...
Article
Full-text available
Early predator detection is a key component of the predator-prey arms race and has driven the evolution of multiple animal hearing systems. Katydids (Insecta) have sophisticated ears, each consisting of paired tympana on each foreleg that receive sound both externally, through the air, and internally via a narrowing ear canal running through the le...
Article
Full-text available
Determining the acoustic ecology of extinct or rare species is challenging due to the inability to record their acoustic signals or hearing thresholds. Katydids and their relatives (Orthoptera: Ensifera) offer a model for inferring acoustic ecology of extinct and rare species, due to allometric parameters of their sound production organs. Here, the...
Article
Full-text available
Bush-crickets (or katydids) have sophisticated and ultrasonic ears located in the tibia of their forelegs, with a working mechanism analogous to the mammalian auditory system. Their inner-ears are endowed with an easily accessible hearing organ, the crista acustica (CA), possessing a spatial organisation that allows for different frequencies to be...
Article
Full-text available
Derived from the respiratory tracheae, bush-crickets’ acoustic tracheae (or ear canal) are hollow tubes evolved to transmit sounds from the external environment to the interior ear. Due to the location of the ears in the forelegs, the acoustic trachea serves as a structural element that can withstand large stresses during locomotion. In this study,...
Article
Full-text available
Hearing loss is not unique to humans and is experienced by all animals in the face of wild and eclectic differences in ear morphology. Here we exploited the high throughput and accessible tympanal ear of the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria to rigorously quantify changes in the auditory system due to noise exposure and age. In this exploratory...
Article
Full-text available
Ensiferan orthopterans offer a key study system for acoustic communication and the process of insect hearing. Cyphoderris monstrosa (Hagloidea) belongs to a relict ensiferan family and is often used for evolutionary comparisons between bushcrickets (Tettigoniidae) and their ancestors. Understanding how this species processes sound is therefore vita...
Preprint
Full-text available
Biological and mechanical systems, whether by their overuse or their aging, will inevitably fail. Hearing provides a poignant example of this with noise-induced and age-related hearing loss. Hearing loss is not unique to humans, however, and is experienced by all animals in the face of wild and eclectic differences in ear morphology and operation....
Article
Male crickets produce acoustic signals by wing stridulation, attracting females for mating. A plectrum on the left forewing's (or tegmen) anal margin rapidly strikes along a serrated vein (stridulatory file, SF) on the opposite tegmen as they close, producing vibrations, ending in a tonal sound. The tooth strike rate of the plectrum across file tee...
Preprint
Full-text available
Early predator detection is a key component of the predator-prey arms race, and has driven the evolution of multiple animal hearing systems. Katydids (Insecta) have sophisticated ears, each consisting of paired tympana on each foreleg that receive sound directly externally, and internally via a narrowing ear canal through the acoustic spiracle. The...
Article
Full-text available
During buzz pollination, bees use vibrations to remove pollen from flowers. Vibrations at the natural frequency of pollen-carrying stamens are amplified through resonance, resulting in higher amplitude vibrations. Because pollen release depends on vibration amplitude, bees could increase pollen removal by vibrating at the natural frequency of stame...
Article
Full-text available
During buzz pollination, bees use vibrations to remove pollen from flowers. Vibrations at the natural frequency of pollen-carrying stamens are amplified through resonance, resulting in higher amplitude vibrations. Because pollen release depends on vibration amplitude, bees could increase pollen removal by vibrating at the natural frequency of stame...
Article
Full-text available
Male crickets and their close relatives bush-crickets (Gryllidae and Tettigoniidae, respectively; Orthoptera and Ensifera) attract distant females by producing loud calling songs. In both families, sound is produced by stridulation, the rubbing together of their forewings, whereby the plectrum of one wing is rapidly passed over a serrated file on t...
Article
Full-text available
Significance The katydid tympanal ears have outer, middle, and inner ear components analogous to mammalian ears. Unlike mammals, each ear has two tympana exposed to sound both externally and internally, with a delayed internal version arriving via the gas-filled ear canal (EC). The two combined inputs in each ear play a significant role in directio...
Article
Full-text available
The use of acoustics in predator evasion is a widely reported phenomenon amongst invertebrate taxa, but the study of ultrasonic anti-predator acoustics is often limited to the prey of bats. Here, we describe the acoustic function and morphology of a unique stridulatory structure in the relict orthopteran Cyphoderris monstrosa (Ensifera, Hagloidea):...
Article
Katydids (bush-crickets) are endowed with tympanal ears located in their forelegs' tibiae. The tympana are backed by an air-filled tube, the acoustic trachea, which transfers the sound stimulus from a spiracular opening on the thorax to the internal side of the tympanic membranes (TM). In katydids the sound stimulus reaches both the external and in...
Article
Full-text available
Approximately half of all bee species use vibrations to remove pollen from plants with diverse floral morphologies. In many buzz-pollinated flowers, these mechanical vibrations generated by bees are transmitted through floral tissues, principally pollen-containing anthers, causing pollen to be ejected from small openings (pores or slits) at the tip...
Preprint
Full-text available
Vision in dogs is generally considered poor compared with humans, and recent reports have reviewed some of the physiological principles underpinning dog vision, but a systematic comparison of the physiological and neurobiological features of vision in dogs compared with humans appears to be lacking. This means there is a risk of an anthropocentric...
Preprint
Full-text available
During buzz pollination, bees use vibrations to remove pollen from flowers. Vibrations at the natural frequency of pollen-carrying stamens are amplified through resonance, resulting in higher-amplitude vibrations. Because pollen release depends on vibration amplitude, bees could increase pollen removal by vibrating at the natural frequency of stame...
Preprint
Full-text available
Approximately half of all bee species use vibrations to remove pollen from plants with diverse floral morphologies. In many buzz-pollinated flowers, these mechanical vibrations generated by bees are transmitted through floral tissues, principally pollen-containing anthers, causing pollen to be ejected from small openings (pores or slits) at the tip...
Article
Full-text available
Bush crickets have tympanal ears located in the forelegs. Their ears are elaborate, as they have outer-, middle-, and inner-ear components. The outer ear comprises an air-filled tube derived from the respiratory trachea, the acoustic trachea (AT), which transfers sound from the mesothoracic acoustic spiracle to the internal side of the ear drums in...
Article
Transparency is a greatly advantageous form of camouflage, allowing species to passively avoid detection regardless of the properties of the surface which they occupy. However, it is uncommon and poorly understood in terrestrial species. In one tribe of predacious katydids (Phlugidini), transparency is paired with highly ultrasonic communication fo...
Article
Full-text available
The behavioural ecology of ultrasonic-singing katydids is not well understood, and the general bioacoustics, barely known for a few Neotropical Meconematinae, tends to be overlooked for species from Southeast Asia. These include Asiatic species of Phlugidini, commonly known as crystal predatory katydids. One of its genera, Asiophlugis consists of 1...
Article
Full-text available
Host‐parasite interactions are predicted to drive the evolution of defences and counter‐defences, but the ability of either partner to adapt depends on new and advantageous traits arising. The loss of male song in Hawaiian field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus) subject to fatal parasitism by eavesdropping flies (Ormia ochracea) is a textbook examp...
Article
Full-text available
The mechanisms underlying rapid macroevolution are controversial. One largely untested hypothesis that could inform this debate is that evolutionary reversals might release variation in vestigial traits, which then facilitates subsequent diversification. We evaluated this idea by testing key predictions about vestigial traits arising from sexual tr...
Article
Male Katydids (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) rub together their specialised forewings to produce sound, a process known as stridulation. During wing closure, a lobe on the anal margin of the right forewing (a scraper), engages with a tooth-covered file on the left forewing. The movement of the scraper across the file produces vibrations which are ampl...
Preprint
Full-text available
Beginning in late 2016, diplomats posted to the United States embassy in Cuba began to experience unexplained health problems including ear pain, tinnitus, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties which reportedly began after they heard strange noises in their homes or hotel rooms. In response, the U.S. government dramatically reduced the number of dipl...
Article
Full-text available
Bush-crickets (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) generate sound using tegminal stridulation. Signalling effectiveness is affected by the widely varying acoustic parameters of temporal pattern, frequency and spectral purity (tonality). During stridulation, frequency multiplication occurs as a scraper on one wing scrapes across a file of sclerotized teeth o...
Article
Full-text available
The emergence and maintenance of animal communication systems requires the co-evolution of signal and receiver. Frogs and toads rely heavily on acoustic communication for coordinating reproduction and typically have ears tuned to the dominant frequency of their vocalizations, allowing discrimination from background noise and heterospecific calls. H...
Article
Male katydids produce mating calls by stridulation using specialized structures on the forewings. The right wing (RW) bears a scraper connected to a drum-like cell known as the mirror and a left wing (LW) that overlaps the RW and bears a serrated vein on the ventral side, the stridulatory file. Sound is generated with the scraper sweeping across th...
Article
Full-text available
Animals use sound for communication, with high-amplitude signals being selected for attracting mates or deterring rivals. High amplitudes are attained by employing primary resonators in sound producing structures to amplify the signal (e.g., avian syrinx). Some species actively exploit acoustic properties of natural structures to enhance signal tra...
Article
In the cloud forests of the central range of the Colombian Andes, we discovered a species of katydid (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) that imitates mosses to an uncanny degree and is exceedingly difficult to detect. The camouflage exhibited by this particular katydid seems quite specific. We discuss the evolutionary consequences of this sort of speciali...
Article
Full-text available
Frequency analysis in the mammalian cochlea depends on the propagation of frequency information in the form of a travelling wave (TW) across tonotopically arranged auditory sensilla. TWs have been directly observed in the basilar papilla of birds and the ears of bush-crickets (Insecta: Orthoptera) and have also been indirectly inferred in the heari...
Article
Full-text available
Male grigs, bush-crickets and field crickets produce mating calls by tegminal stridulation: the scraping together of modified forewings functioning as sound generators. Bush- (Tettigoniidae) and field-crickets (Gryllinae) diverged some 240 million years ago, with each lineage developing unique characteristics in wing morphology and the associated m...
Presentation
Full-text available
Conference abstract for the symposium: Acoustic and vibrational communication in Orthoptera
Article
Full-text available
The ear of the bush-cricket, Copiphora gorgonensis, consists of a system of paired eardrums (tympana) on each foreleg. In these insects, the ear is backed by an air-filled tube, the acoustic trachea (AT), which transfers sound from the prothoracic acoustic spiracle to the internal side of the eardrums. Both surfaces of the eardrums of this auditory...
Article
Male bush-crickets produce acoustic signals by wing stridulation to call females. Several species also alternate vibratory signals with acoustic calls for intraspecific communication, a way to reduce risk of detection by eavesdropping predators. Both modes of communication have been documented mostly in neotropical species, for example in the genus...
Article
The ear of the bush-cricket, Copiphora gorgonensis, consists of a system of paired eardrums (tympana) on each foreleg. In these insects, the ear is backed by an air-filled tube, the acoustic trachea (AT), which transfers sound from the prothoracic acoustic spiracle to the internal side of the eardrums. Both surfaces of the eardrums of this auditory...
Article
The ear of the bush-cricket, Copiphora gorgonensis, consists of a system of paired eardrums (tympana) on each foreleg. In these insects, the ear is backed by an air-filled tube, the acoustic trachea (AT), which transfers sound from the prothoracic acoustic spiracle to the internal side of the eardrums. Both surfaces of the eardrums of this auditory...
Article
Full-text available
Male field crickets generate calls to attract distant females through tegminal stridulation: the rubbing together of the overlying right wing which bears a file of cuticular teeth against the underlying left wing which carries a sclerotized scraper. During stridulation, specialized areas of membrane on both wings are set into oscillating vibrations...
Poster
Male bushcrickets sing by rubbing their wings together to attract distant females. The left wing bears a vein modified as a file and sits on top of the right wing, which bears a scraper. Sound is produced when the scraper is passed across the file. Bushcrickets song frequencies usually range from audible signals (5 kHz) to low ultrasonic (30 kHz)....
Presentation
Full-text available
In mammals, frequency analysis of acoustic signals is possible due to the mechanical anisotropy of the basilar membrane (BM) in the cochlea. Travelling waves (TW), propagating inside the cochlea fluid-filled cavity, generate amplitude maxima responses at frequency-specific locations along the BM, providing a spatial map of sound frequencies. Physio...
Article
Full-text available
Animals have evolved a vast diversity of mechanisms to detect sounds. Auditory organs are thus used to detect intraspecific communicative signals and environmental sounds relevant to survival. To hear, terrestrial animals must convert the acoustic energy contained in the airborne sound pressure waves into neural signals. In mammals, spectral qualit...
Article
Full-text available
This article reports the discovery of a new genus and three species of predaceous katydid (Insecta: Orthoptera) from Colombia and Ecuador in which males produce the highest frequency ultrasonic calling songs so far recorded from an arthropod. Male katydids sing by rubbing their wings together to attract distant females. Their song frequencies usual...
Article
Full-text available
(Spanish version of the 2012 Science paper on convergence evolution between insect and mammalian audition). En qué se parece un humano a un saltamontes? A primera vista, en nada. Sin embargo, en 2012 se descubrió que ambos han desarrollado un mecanismo semejante para poder percibir los sonidos del mundo que los rodea. El hallazgo se realizó en cier...
Article
Full-text available
Male Tettigoniidae emit sound to attract conspecific females. The sound is produced by stridulation. During stridulation the forewings open and close, but it is during the closing stroke that the scraper contacts the file teeth to generate the predominant sound components, which are amplified by adjacent wing cells specialized in sound radiation. T...
Article
Full-text available
This paper illustrates the biomechanics of sound production in the neotropical predaceous katydid Arachnoscelis arachnoides (Insecta: Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae). Described and previously known from only one male specimen, this genus of predaceous katydids resembles spiders in their general body appearance. To call distant females, male katydids pro...
Article
Full-text available
This paper provides some observations on the anatomy of the neotropical katydid Arachnoscelis arachnoides Karny (Insecta: Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae). Arachnoscelis is a genus of predaceous katydids that comprise species that resemble spiders in their general body appearance. The type species, A. arachnoids, was described in 1891 from a single male...
Article
Full-text available
Sound production in crickets relies on stridulation, the well-understood rubbing together of a pair of specialised wings. As the file of one wing slides over the scraper of the other, a series of rhythmic impacts cause harmonic oscillations, usually resulting in the radiation of pure tones delivered at low frequencies (2-8 kHz). In the short winged...
Article
Full-text available
How to Hear In mammalian ears, a chain of biophysical events allows for the translation of airborne acoustic energy into mechanical vibrations that can be detected by mechanosensory cells in the cochlear. Mammalian ears have been considered largely unique in this transformation because it is the delicate, mammalian-specific, bones of the middle ear...
Article
Full-text available
Despite their small size, some insects, such as crickets, can produce high amplitude mating songs by rubbing their wings together. By exploiting structural resonance for sound radiation, crickets broadcast species-specific songs at a sharply tuned frequency. Such songs enhance the range of signal transmission, contain information about the signaler...
Article
Full-text available
Behaviors are challenging to reconstruct for extinct species, particularly the nature and origins of acoustic communication. Here we unravel the song of Archaboilus musicus Gu, Engel and Ren sp. nov., a 165 million year old stridulating katydid. From the exceptionally preserved morphology of its stridulatory apparatus in the forewings and phylogene...
Article
Full-text available
Ears evolved in many groups of moths to detect the echolocation calls of predatory bats. Although the neurophysiology of bat detection has been intensively studied in moths for decades, the relationship between sound-induced movement of the noctuid tympanic membrane and action potentials in the auditory sensory cells (A1 and A2) has received little...
Article
Full-text available
This article compiles information about the species of Tettigoniidae present in Colombia, based on biological collections and the literature. To date 345 species grouped in 129 genera and seven subfamilies are known from the country. The presence of 77 species recorded from other countries is documented for the first time. Regarding the katydids th...
Article
Full-text available
Male field crickets emit pure-tone mating calls by rubbing their wings together. Acoustic radiation is produced by rapid oscillations of the wings, as the right wing (RW), bearing a file, is swept across the plectrum borne on the left wing (LW). Earlier work found the natural resonant frequency (f(o)) of individual wings to be different, but there...
Article
This paper describes Artiotonus, a new genus of tropical katydid from Colombia and Ecuador. These acoustic ensiferans are represented by three species with a geographic distribution generally restricted to the rainforest of the Bolivar geosyncline of northwestern South America (Pacific). A phylogenetic analysis based on 28 morphological and six beh...
Article
Full-text available
This paper constitutes a major attempt to associate tympanic deflections with the mechanoreceptor organ location in an acoustic insect. The New Zealand tree weta (Hemideina thoracica) has tympanal ears located on each of the prothoracic tibiae. The tympana exhibit a sclerotized oval plate, membranous processes bulging out from the tibial cuticle an...
Article
Full-text available
This article describes the acoustic characters of Copiphora gorgonensis, a new species endemic to Gorgona Island National Park, Colombia. It is closely related to C. brevicauda, a congener distributed in the Pacific rainforest of Ecuador and Colombia, and also reported in Central America and other countries of northern South America. Here we provid...

Questions

Question (1)
Question
Dear Xiaoqiang Li,
Just to report that in your paper, my two cited references are incorrect:
Fernando, M.Z. & Andrew, C.M. (2005) The mechanics of sound production in Panacanthus pallicornis (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae: Conocephalinae): the stridulatory motor patterns. The Journal of Experimental Biology, 208, 1219–1237. http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/jeb.01526
Fernando, M.Z., Thorin, J. & Daniel, R. (2011) Sound radiation and wing mechanics in stridulating field crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae). The Journal of Experimental Biology, 214, 2105–2117. http://dx.doi.org/10.1242/jeb.056283
My name should be Montealegre-Z, F. and not Fernando, M.Z..
cheers
fer

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