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The relative importance of olfaction and vision in a diurnal and a nocturnal hawkmoth

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Abstract

Nectar-feeding animals can use vision and olfaction to find rewarding flowers and different species may give different weight to the two sensory modalities. We have studied how a diurnal or nocturnal lifestyle affects the weight given to vision and olfaction. We tested naïve hawkmoths of two species in a wind tunnel, presenting an odour source and a visual stimulus. Although the two species belong to the same subfamily of sphingids, the Macroglossinae, their behaviour was quite different. The nocturnal Deilephila elpenor responded preferably to the odour while the diurnal Macroglossum stellatarum strongly favoured the visual stimulus. Since a nocturnal lifestyle is ancestral for sphingids, the diurnal species, M. stellatarum, has evolved from nocturnal moths that primarily used olfaction. During bright daylight visual cues may have became more important than odour.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Christer Löfstedt for letting us use the wind tunnel and for helpful discussions, Michael Pfaff for help with breeding the M. stellatarum, Christian Balkenius for lending us equipment, Rita Wallén for the help with the Scanning EM and Eric Hallberg who helped to identify the sensilla of the moths. Thanks to Robert Raguso, Bill Hansson, Eric Hallberg, Christian Balkenius and two anonymous referees for giving constructive comments on the manuscript. We are grateful for the financial support by the Swedish Science Council.

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Balkenius, A., Rosén, W. & Kelber, A. The relative importance of olfaction and vision in a diurnal and a nocturnal hawkmoth. J Comp Physiol A 192, 431–437 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-005-0081-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-005-0081-6

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