Image of the Day: Hearing Aid

A swollen wing vein helps butterflies detect low-frequency sounds.

Written byCatherine Offord

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ABOVE: The swollen vein of a common wood nymph butterfly, Cercyonis pegala
YACK LAB, CARLETON UNIVERSITY

Butterflies in the Satyrinae subfamily have ears at the base of their wings that they likely use to detect predators. Next to their ears are prominent, swollen wing veins whose function has been a mystery.

Now, researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa report that the veins appear to be part of the insects’ hearing system, and that when these inflated structures are ablated, butterflies lose their sensitivity to low-frequency sounds (below 5 kHz).

P. Sun et al., “In that vein: Inflated wing veins contribute to butterfly hearing,” Biol Lett, 20180496, 2018.

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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