Meeting Abstract

67-4   11:15 - 11:30  Modeling evolution of firefly-like signal vocabularies Nguyen, C*; Huang, I; Peleg, O; University of Colorado Boulder; University of Colorado Boulder; University of Colorado Boulder chantal.nguyen@colorado.edu

Fireflies communicate by producing bioluminescence to signal their presence and court mates. In particular, some species emit patterns of short flashes with the potential to encode information; males flash according to a species-specific pattern in order to attract and locate females. Many fireflies flashing in a swarm can lead to immense visual clutter, exacerbated by the potential presence of other species emitting different flash patterns. Nevertheless, fireflies successfully communicate via efficient signals that limit both energetic cost and predation risk, while being detectable by conspecifics and distinguishable from other species' flashes. We investigate how flash sequences can co-evolve to be distinguishable by developing a “vocabulary generator” model, which we use to simulate sequences that minimize both their mutual similarity with each other and their individual predation risks. We observe an emergent periodicity in the resulting optimal sequences despite the lack of any constraints on the sequences to be periodic. We also demonstrate a method of reconstructing potential cost functions from the phylogenetic relationships of extant species alongside their characteristic flash patterns.