The first evidence on vibration-based communication between long-banded silverline butterflies and acrobat ants was detailed in a paper coauthored by Taiwanese researchers and published in Scientific Reports on Friday last week.
Many lycaenid butterflies in Taiwan have developed organs to attract ants to tend to them, by providing food through dorsal nectary organs or mimicking chemical signals, with one notable exception — the long-banded silverline, National Taiwan Normal University professor Hsu Yu-feng (徐堉峰) said on Thursday.
After observing the long-banded silverline butterfly pupae and larvae attracting a similar number of attendant ants, Hsu said that he and the other coauthors developed the hypothesis that the pupae and larvae were able to produce specific vibrational calls to attract the the acrobat ant.
Photo courtesy of National Taiwan Normal University
Recordings made during the experiment showed that the larvae made three kinds of calls — which the researchers designated as types A, B and C — while pupae could emit one, all of which were very similar to calls emitted by acrobat ants, Hsu said.
Type A calls and pupal calls appeared to induce three behaviors in the ants (aggregation, touching of antennae and guarding), while type B and C calls were correlated with ant aggregation and guarding behavior, he said.
The experiments showed that benevolent behavior in the ants increased significantly from the calls.
The researchers have not discerned how the larvae make the calls, but experiments could test whether vibration-based calls were species-specific, the paper showed.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS