Numerous insect use vibrational songs in courtship; signals are crucial for recognition, selection and localization of sexual partners, and thus for continuation of the species. Our behavioural and neurophysiological experiments, complemented with modelling of vibrational receptor response in the Southern Green Stink Bug, revealed a previously unknown mechanism with which ambient noise disrupts recognition and localization of vibrational songs in insects. This mechanism—different distortion of the signal waveform arriving to spatially separated receptor organs—appears to be unique to vibrational communication. Experiments have hown that even noise completely outside the frequency range of signals may disrupt recognition of frequency and direction. Furthermore, the effect of noise on behaviour became notable at much lower amplitudes than in noise that disrupts sound communication in insects.

One of the possible consequences of this phenomenon is that man-made (»anthropogenic«) noise may negatively impact natural insect communities in previously unrecognized ways. For example, traffic may disrupt natural insect communities far from the road. Our model species, the Southern Green Stink Bug, may be an invasive pest in this part of the world, but numerous stink bugs and other insects which communicate using vibrations are a key element of natural ecosystems. Only by understanding basic biological processes, such as signal perception, we may better predict negative human impacts on nature and help to mitigate them.

The paper was recently published in the journal Communications Biology.