Most people know Darwin discovered an orchid in 1862 with a 30cm long flower that led him to predict the existence of a moth with a proboscis long enough to pollinate it. Said moth was found in 1903.

Just yesterday it was discovered that...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bt… This moth produces enough ultrasound to likely jam the sonar of bats!! @JulietteJRubin sole author.

So this moth is apparently in two evolutionary arms races! One with orchids and one with bats!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bt…

👏👏New paper alert!
Bats navigate long distances at night WITHOUT ECHOLOCATION!

@BatTed_1000 @YovelBatLab and I put mini ultrasound & accel recorders on wild hoary bats, recording 10 s clips every 1-3 minutes. Many clips had no echolocation, despite accels showing bats flying Why do they do this? Bats often switched between periods using normal high-intensity echolocation with some feeding buzzes to periods (20-30 mins) with mostly silence, micro calls (more later) and chasing events with other hoary bats.

The story of bat evolution is unfolding before our (much superior) eyes! (A Thread)

We used to talk about "micro bats" (small echolocators) and "mega bats" (large fruit eaters including flying foxes)...

1/n In the 2000s, genomic data showed that a large group of "micro bats" (the Rhinolophoidea) was more closely related to megabats than the rest of the microbats (the Yinpterochiroptera).

This was a shock to people who were used to the old classification for decades

#Top10 Bat discoveries of the 2010s! (That is, why bats are obviously the most amazing creatures on the planet)

1. Bats have microscopic hairs on their wings that let them feel airflow and avoid stall

(Sterbing D'Angelo et al. 2011 PNAS)
Photo: A. Hyde 2. Brazilian free-tailed bats jam conspecific sonar to compete for food.

(Corcoran and Conner, 2014 Science)
Image: N. Hristov