ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER Ultrasonic courtship song of the yellow peach moth, Conogethes punctiferalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) Ryo Nakano • Takuma Takanashi • Fumio Ihara • Koji Mishiro • Masatoshi Toyama • Yukio Ishikawa Received: 27 October 2011 / Accepted: 12 January 2012 / Published online: 28 January 2012 Ó The Japanese Society of Applied Entomology and Zoology 2012 Abstract Although generation of ultrasound during courtship has been reported for an increasing number of moth species, the effect of the ultrasound on mating remains uncertain in many cases because of a lack of proper verification. Here we report that males of the yellow peach moth Conogethes punctiferalis (Crambidae) sexually communicate with females by emitting loud ultrasound (103 dB peak equivalent sound pressure level at 1 cm; dominant frequency 82 kHz) before attempting copulation. The male ultrasound consists of consecutive clicks (pulses) in the early phase of the sound train and consecutive pulses (burst) in the late phase. When females were deafened by puncturing the abdominal tympanic membranes, copulation never occurred. We found that deafened females did not assume the wing-raising posture, which, for normal pairs, always precedes successful copulation. Our findings indi- cate that male courtship ultrasound evokes wing-raising as an acceptance behavior from females, which in turn evokes a copulation attempt by a male. Keywords Acoustic communication Á Courtship song Á Mate acceptance Á Ultrasound Á Yellow peach moth Introduction Most insects have developed several sensory channels through which various cues from diverse signalers are obtained, e.g., cues for survival from predators, cues for copulation from mates, and cues for resource competition from conspecific rivals (Greenfield 2002). Among moths, the auditory sense is rather predominant, especially in nocturnal macrolepidoptera (Minet and Surlykke 2003). Hearing in moths is assumed to have originated from the detection of predatory bats that emit ultrasonic pulses for echolocation (Roeder 1998; Miller and Surlykke 2001; Yack 2004). Subsequently, some moths have secondarily evolved ultrasonic sexual communication by exploiting the ability to hear ultrasound (Conner 1999; Minet and Surlykke 2003). Thus, not a few moths use acoustic information for both predator avoidance and mating. Ultrasound production during mating behavior has been reported for an increasing number of moth species in the last three decades (Spangler 1988; Sanderford and Conner 1995; Simmons and Conner 1996; Sanderford et al. 1998; Conner 1999; Nakano et al. 2006, 2009; Takanashi et al. 2010). Ultrasound produced by moths for sexual commu- nication is classified into two types on the basis of its role— calling song (Surlykke and Gogala 1986; Spangler 1988; Alcock et al. 1989; Heller and Achmann 1993; Heller and Krahe 1994; Sanderford and Conner 1995) and courtship song (Conner 1987; Simmons and Conner 1996; Sanderford Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13355-012-0092-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. R. Nakano (&) Á F. Ihara Á K. Mishiro Á M. Toyama Breeding and Pest Management Division, NARO Institute of Fruit Tree Science, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8605, Japan e-mail: rnakano@affrc.go.jp T. Takanashi Department of Forest Entomology, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8687, Japan Y. Ishikawa Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan 123 Appl Entomol Zool (2012) 47:87–93 DOI 10.1007/s13355-012-0092-z