This is Scientific American 60 Second Science. I'm Shayla Farsan.

Insects can be noisy, but most of the sounds they produce, we can't hear. Take tiny insects called tree hoppers. They communicate

through vibrations. When a male tree hopper is hunting for a mate, he vibrates his body to produce a special love song.

They sound like, oo, poo, poo, poo, poo,

Casey Fowler Finn is an assistant professor of biology at St. Louis University.

She says if a female tree hopper is interested, she'll vibrate back to the male, basically

her way of saying, hey there, Fowler Finn wondered if treehopper mating songs might change

at different temperatures, which could affect whether the species

survives as the climate changes. So she and grad student Doe and Hawksen built custom incubators

using plywood and IKEA shelves,

plus a special laser that helps them listen to tree hoppers.

The laser receives information about these tiny vibrations

on the

plant stem which we then amplify and process into sounds that we can hear. Turns out the tree

hoppers do sound different when the temperature changes. Here's a male singing at

65 degrees, and another at 97 degrees.

But that's not all.

The team recorded these songs and played them for females to see if they still found them attractive.

So essentially we're having a conversation with the insect because we can play back a bunch of different signals to females and ask her how much she likes each one.

As male treehopper love songs changed across temperatures, females still recognize them,

saying, yep, I'm interested in mating with you.

Huxen says that was exciting.

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