McKenna's research published in high-impact journal Nature Communications
Sound-making and hearing mechanisms appeared surprisingly early in the evolution of the insect order Orthoptera (katydids, crickets, grasshoppers, and relatives), according to research published by an international team of researchers in the journal Nature Communications. The team included Dr. Duane McKenna, William Hill Professor of Biology, director of the University of Memphis Center for Biodiversity Research and FedEx Institute of Technology Fellow in the Agriculture and Food Technologies Research Cluster; and Dr. Seunggwan Shin, a postdoctoral researcher in the McKenna Lab who is now an assistant professor at Seoul National University in South Korea.
Insects are the most diverse group of animals on Earth that communicate acoustically, even outnumbering the many mammal and bird species that use this mode of communication. The order Orthoptera contains approximately 16,000 species which use acoustic communication. However, unlike mammals and birds, they use various specialized mechanisms on their wings or legs and abdomens to create and hear sounds.
McKenna and Shin helped reconstruct the Orthoptera family tree and the evolution of hearing and singing in Orthoptera using large-scale DNA data. They worked closely with colleagues worldwide, including Dr. Hojun Song at Texas A&M University, a specialist on Orthoptera, who led the project. According to McKenna, "This work involved one of the largest analyses of DNA data ever undertaken for a group of insects, and is notable for having illuminated the ancient origins of singing and hearing, and the otherwise remarkable evolutionary history of the charismatic insect order Orthoptera." Their paper "Phylogenomic analysis sheds light on the evolutionary pathways towards acoustic communication in Orthoptera" showed that certain Orthoptera have been communicating to find mates, avoid predators, and navigate, for more than 300 million years—since well before the first dinosaurs.
Their research was funded in-part by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and by the 1,000 Insect Transcriptome Evolution Project. McKenna and Shin will continue to collaborate with Song through a recently awarded 5-year NSF grant seeking to further characterize the evolution of hearing and singing in this ecologically and economically significant group of insects.
For more information on this research, contact McKenna at dmckenna@memphis.edu.