Caterpillars listen to voicemail by eating soil

[Still Waters]

Leaf-eating caterpillars greatly enrich their intestinal flora by eating soil. Even effects of plants that previously grew in that soil can be found back in bacteria and fungi in caterpillars. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Leiden University write about this discovery in Nature Communications.

Earlier research by NIOO indicated that plants, acting much like telephones, transmit information between insects above and below ground. In addition, soil can also store these messages, like voicemails which can later be listened again. In a new study, a team of four ecologists have now discovered that above-ground insects such as caterpillars can retrieve this voicemail from the ground themselves, without the intervention of plants.

https://phys.org/news/2019-03-caterpillars-voicemail-soil.html