Choristers of the Jurassic

The production of acoustic signals is among the most important behaviors in animal communication, because sending and receiving messages using sound is essential for the survival and success of almost all kinds of animals. However, the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of acoustic performance is a major challenge. Using phylogenetic methods based on data from living animals is the most prevalent approach for reconstructing the past, because the fossil record of morphological traits permitting the analysis of acoustic communication is rather poor (1). In PNAS, Gu et al. (2) present an elegant reconstruction of musical calls of an extinct Middle Jurassic katydid based on remarkably well-preserved fossil wings collected from 165-million-year-old sediments in China. Befittingly, they named the species Archaboilus musicus, for its capability to produce musical songs. A. musicus is a member of the extinct family Haglidae, a group basal to extant katydids that has a diverse fossil record spanning the Late Triassic to the Early Cretaceous. Charles Darwin suggested that katydids, also called bushcrickets, are ideal candidates for the study of sexual selection (3, 4). Since then these insects have been intensively examined for their acoustic communication systems, in which singing males attract sexually receptive females (5). In living katydids as well as in a Tertiary species (6), the production of complex, species-specific songs has led to a pronounced left–right asymmetry of the forewings in …