Figure 1 in The Behavioral Ecology of Insect Vibrational Communication

Figure 1. Prevalence of various signaling modalities among insects that use mechanical communication (categories from Greenfield 2002). The pie chart above shows an estimate obtained by tallying the number of families for which evidence of signaling in any given modality exists. The chart below shows a more speculative estimate obtained by counting the number of species for which such evidence is available; for groups in which reports suggest the use of a modality is widespread, or for which few reports exist but all have found use of a particular modality, we tallied the total number of described species in the group. We excluded instances of detection of incidental cues produced by conspecifics (e.g., we did not count detection of water surface vibrations by gyrinid beetles or of near-field vibrations by culicids and chironomids). We also excluded instances in which the vibration might be perceived through direct bodily contact (e.g., during copulatory courtship). Files with the references used to generate this figure are available on request from the authors. The distribution of signaling modalities among insect orders (phylogenetic tree from Gullan and Cranston 2000) suggests that the use of substrate vibrations for communication may be ancestral for at least some insect groups at the supraordinal level.