A Battle of Intelligence: Review of Organ- ismal Eavesdropping and Predation
Abstract
In the complex natural world, organisms constantly seek to gain an advantage in any way possible to survive, including eavesdropping on signals from other organisms. Eavesdropping is the interception and reading of signals that are not intended for the recipient. Those signals can be both interspecific communication between similar trophic level organisms and predator-prey relationships. Both the predator and the prey can eavesdrop on each other’s signals, whether they be auditory, vibrational, or pheromonal. In this review paper, I examine the different forms of eavesdropping that exist, beginning with intraspecific eavesdropping and interspecific eavesdropping of the same trophic level to examine the mutualistic and commensality of such eavesdropping and the multiple ways they exist. This will be followed by an examination of predator and prey eavesdropping and the multiple sensory modalities in which they eavesdrop, auditory, vibrational, and chemical, as well as a specific dive on the eavesdropping involving sexual pheromones. I also examine the unique relationship of a three-way parasitoid eavesdropping relationship, and a plant trapping prey pheromonal eavesdropping relationship. This paper aims to summarize multiple forms of eavesdropping and the need for further study on eavesdropping of sexual pheromones.
Introduction
Since the beginning of life, organisms have been in a constant search for nutrients in order to survive. As time progressed, some organisms became predators and others became prey. Both predators and prey have evolved ways to communicate in order to signal food availability, warn of threats, and find mates, such as winter moths releasing pheromones to find a mate and bees stingers releasing pheromones to encourage other bees to sting its target, which are all driven by survival.
Naturally, each organism, both predator and prey, evolved methods to locate and either hunt or avoid each other, respectively. This act, known as eavesdropping, is where an organism intercepts and responds to a signal not meant for the receiver, and locates the signaler or recipient via said signal. Eavesdropping can occur across a variety of modalities such as sounds, pheromones, and vibrations and can be intraspecific, prey eavesdropping predators, and predators eavesdropping prey.
This article aims to review the multiple forms in which eavesdropping occurs in nature. While this review paper is not exhaustive of all possibilities and relationships in which eavesdropping occurs, it serves to create a baseline of knowledge and inform the readers of the ways eavesdropping exists in nature, beginning with predators eavesdropping on their prey. Within this section, I review literature showing eavesdropping through vibrational stimuli and pheromone eavesdropping, two different media in which predators locate their prey, and where multiple signals are intended for mating but observed by predators. I also discuss the reverse relationship, prey eavesdropping on their predators to avoid predation, again through the media of vibrational stimuli and pheromone eavesdropping, with a further emphasis on the duality of this relationship between predators and prey. Finally, I move into intraspecific competition, within both predator species and prey species, discussing vocal stimuli and varying response to warning cries in prey animals. I then end by briefly discussing some of the complex real-world examples of eavesdropping, such as a fungus eavesdropping on its prey and an example of a vector placing hormones on a plant for the plants parasite to locate, then consuming the parasite from the plant, also known as an eavesdropping web.
This paper is designed to educate readers on the topic out of an abundance of interest from the writer. Understanding of the complex ways in which organisms eavesdrop on each other helps create a better understanding of the ecosystem, niches, and how organisms coexist with each other in such complex ecosystems. It is also vital to understand how invasive species may have an edge in eavesdropping in their new environment. Invasive species create mayhem throughout an ecosystem or even towards one organism, such as what happened to the Kiwi, a small, flightless bird in New Zealand that has no native predators but has since become endangered after the introduction of dogs and rodents to the island.