Transcript Cricket Presentationx

CAN YOU TELL THE
TEMPERATURE BY THE SINGING
OF CRICKETS?
Steven Sutcliffe
HISTORY
1881 First published claim in Salem Gazette
 1897 First published scientific formula Dolbear’s
“The Cricket as the Thermometer”
 1898 Species identified by Bessay & Bessay

http://www.andersonmilitaria.com/Web_Pages/misc/early/early.htm
(www.sciencephoto.com)
htBessay & Bessay confirm
tp://www.bobklips.com/earlyseptember2009.html
PHYLOGENY REVIEW
Order Orthoptera
 Two suborders: Ensifera
and Caelifera
 Caelifera – Grasshoppers
and Locusts
 Ensifera – Crickets and
Katydids

(Huber et al. 1989)
PHYLOGENY REVIEW
Suborder Enisfera branched off in Carboniferous
period
 Family Gryllidae (crickets and mole crickets)
 More than 2,600 species

MORPHOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
Figure 1.1 Morphological diversity among crickets. E)
Allonembius allardi male F) Apteronemobius darwini
male G) Crtoxipha columbiana male H) Burrianus
pachyceros male I) Madasumma affinis male J)
Oecanthus latipennis male K) Cycloptilum bidens
male L) Myrmecophilus pergandei male (Huber et al.
1989)
EVOLUTION OF ACOUSTIC
COMMUNICATION
•Orthoptera: first
group for sound
communication
•Ensifera: first animal
group to communicate
acoustically over long
distances
•Sound system:
evolved once or
multiple times?
(Otte 1992)
WHAT IS CHIRPING?
Stridulation
 Not just used by
insects
 Rubbing wings NOT
legs

High-Speed footage of the club winged manakins
MECHANICS OF STRIDULATION
Modified forewing (tegmen)
 Scraper and File
 Often combined with resonator

Venation, wings areas and
stridulum in crickets, illustrated in
Lerneca fuscipenni (DesutterGrandcolas 2005)
STRIDULATION
Scraper strikes the file
 Closing of wing cycle
 Harp and Mirror

http://what-when-how.com/insects/crickets-insects/
TYPES OF SINGING
Chirping is divided into three components
 Pulses, Chirps and Trills
 Controlled by brain in cooperation with thoraic
ganglion.

Chirping
Trill
HOW DO THEY HEAR?
Tympante Ear
 Made up of 1) Tympanum 2) Tracheal Sac 3)
Tympanal organ
 Located on forelegs

Horizontal section through the right ear
of a noctuid (Yager 1999) Ty =
Tympanum Ts =Tracheal sac To
=Tympanal Organ
WHY DO THEY CHIRP?
Crickets are aggressive and territorial
 Noncontact reproductive communication
 Males communicate to female for attraction
 Males communicate to other males to defend
territory

http://kaleidoscope.culturalchina.com/en/11Kaleidoscope5830.html
BODY SIZE AND SINGING
Body size can be a physical constraint
 Efficiency of sound radiation frequency
dependent
 Frequency dependent on size

TEMPERATURE AND SONG
Songs not learned and only altered by
temperature.
 Pulse rates uniform
 Warm weather increases pulse rate
 Ectotherms

The American Naturalist
THE CHEMISTRY OF IT ALL
Biological processes dependent on chemical
reactions
 Thermoconofers vs Thermoregulators
 Crickets are thermoconofers (mystery solved!)

http://www.nhc.ed.ac.uk/index.php?page=24.25.298.301
http://www.edupics.com/image-thermometeri14717.html
CONCLUSION
Crickets’ pulse rates do change linearly with
temperature
 Singing by crickets is done using their wings not
their legs
 Cricket singing is species specific

DOLBEAR’S FORMULA
Dolbear’s formula
 For species Oecanthus niveus (The Narrow
Winged Tree Cricket)
 A sample of the song

T = 50 + (N-40)/4
T= Temperature in Fahrenheit
N= Number of chirps per minute
SOURCES

Alexander, Anne J. 1958. On the Stridulation of Scorpions. Behaviour 12, no. 4 (January 1): 339-352.

Bailey, Winston. 2006. Insect Songs - The Evolution of Signal Complexity. In Insect Sounds and Communication: Physiology, Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution, ed. Sakis Drosopoulos. CRC press.

Bostwick, Kimberly S., and Richard O. Prum. 2005. Courting Bird Sings with Stridulating Wing Feathers. Science 309, no. 5735. New Series (July 29): 736.

Cocroft, Reginald, and Paul De Luca. 2006. Size-Frequency Relationships in Insect Vibratory Signals. In Insect Sounds and Communication: Physiology, Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution, ed. Sakis
Drosopoulos and Michael F. Claridge. CRC press.

Desutter-Grandcolas, L. 1995. Functional forewing morphology and stridulation in crickets (Orthoptera, Grylloidea). Journal of Zoology 236, no. 2 (6): 243-252. doi:10.1111/j.14697998.1995.tb04491.x.

Desutter-Grandcolas, Laure. 2003. Phylogeny and the evolution of acoustic communication in extant Ensifera (Insecta, Orthoptera). Zoologica Scripta 32, no. 6 (11): 525-561. doi:10.1046/j.14636409.2003.00142.x.

Drosopoulos, Sakis, and Michael F. Claridge. 2006. Insect sounds and communication: physiology, behaviour, ecology, and evolution. Taylor & Francis, January.

Edes, Robert T. 1899. Relation of the Chirping of the Tree Cricket (Oecanthus niveus) to Temperature. The American Naturalist 33, no. 396 (December 1): 935-938.

Frings, Hubert, and Mable Frings. 1962. Effects of temperature on the ordinary song of the common meadow grasshopper,Orchelimum vulgare (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae). Journal of Experimental
Zoology 151, no. 1 (10): 33-51. doi:10.1002/jez.1401510104.

Hedwig, Berthold. 2000. Control of Cricket Stridulation by a Command Neuron: Efficacy Depends on the Behavioral State. Journal of Neurophysiology 83, no. 2 (February 1): 712 -722.

Huber, Franz, Thomas Edwin Moore, and Werner Loher. 1989. Cricket behavior and neurobiology. Cornell University Press.

Jocqué, Rudy. 2000. SIX STRIDULATING ORGANS ON ONE SPIDER (ARANEAE, ZODARIIDAE): IS THIS THE LIMIT? Journal of Arachnology 33, no. 2 (8): 597-603. doi:10.1636/04-107.1.

Jost, M.C., and K.L. Shaw. 2006. Phylogeny of Ensifera (Hexapoda: Orthoptera) using three ribosomal loci, with implications for the evolution of acoustic communication. Molecular Phylogenetics and
Evolution 38, no. 2 (February): 510-530. doi:16/j.ympev.2006.10.004.

Moradian, Nima R., and Sean E. Walker. 2008. Relationships between Body Size and Sound-Producing Structures in Crickets: Do Large Males Have Large Harps? Invertebrate Biology 127, no. 4
(January 1): 444-451.

Nischk, Frank, and Daniel Otte. 2000. Bioacoustics, Ecology and Systematics of Ecuadorian Rainforest Crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae: Phalangopsinae), with a Description of Four New Genera and
Ten New Species. Journal of Orthoptera Research, no. 9 (November 1): 229-254. doi:10.2307/3503651.

Otte, Daniel. 1992. Evolution of Cricket Songs. Journal of Orthoptera Research, no. 1 (December 1): 25-49. doi:10.2307/3503559.

Rost, R., and H. W. Honegger. 1987. The Timing of Premating and Mating Behavior in a Field Population of the Cricket Gryllus campestris L. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 21, no. 5 (January
1): 279-289.

Walker, Thomas J. 1962. Factors Responsible for Intraspecific Variation in the Calling Songs of Crickets. Evolution 16, no. 4 (December 1): 407-428. doi:10.2307/2406176.

Yager, David D. 1999. Structure, development, and evolution of insect auditory systems. Microscopy Research and Technique 47, no. 6 (12): 380-400. doi:10.1002/(SICI)10970029(19991215)47:6<380::AID-JEMT3>3.0.CO;2-P.