The parasitoid fly ormia ochracea (Diptera: Tachinidae) can use juvenile crickets as hosts

The parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea uses the calling song of its host Gryllus spp. to locate an area inhabited by potential hosts. Once a calling male has been located, O. ochracea deposits live larvae on the host, and on substrates surrounding the host to enable the larvae to attach to and enter individuals in the vicinity of the calling male. In Texas, where O. ochracea parasitizes the Texas field cricket Gryllus texensis, we observed juvenile crickets in the mating aggregations that form around calling males. Juvenile G. texensis crickets are, therefore, potentially susceptible to parasitism by O. ochracea. Here we investigated whether laboratory reared juvenile field crickets could successfully host O. ochracea larvae. We found that juvenile crickets were appropriate hosts for O. ochracea

How age influences phonotaxis in virgin female Jamaican field crickets (Gryllus assimilis)

Female mating preference can be a dominant force shaping the evolution of sexual signals. However, females rarely have consistent mating preferences throughout their lives. Preference flexibility results fromcomplex interactions of predation risk, social and sexual experience, and age. Because residual reproductive value should theoretically decline with age, older females should not be as choosy as younger females. We explored how age influences phonotaxis towards a standard mate attraction signal using a spherical treadmill (trackball) and a no-choice experimental protocol. Female Jamaican field crickets, Gryllus assimilis, were highly variable in their phonotaxis; age explained up to 64% of this variation. Females 10 days post imaginal eclosion and older oriented toward the mate attraction signal, with 10-and 13-day females exhibiting the greatest movement in the direction of the signal. Our study suggests 10-and 13-day old females would be most responsive when quantifying the preference landscape for G. assimilis sexual signals

Adaptive Plasticity in Wild Field Cricket's Acoustic Signaling

Phenotypic plasticity can be adaptive when phenotypes are closely matched to changes in the environment. In crickets, rhythmic fluctuations in the biotic and abiotic environment regularly result in diel rhythms in density of sexually active individuals. Given that density strongly influences the intensity of sexual selection, we asked whether crickets exhibit plasticity in signaling behavior that aligns with these rhythmic fluctuations in the socio-sexual environment. We quantified the acoustic mate signaling behavior of wild-caught males of two cricket species, Gryllus veletis and G. pennsylvanicus. Crickets exhibited phenotypically plastic mate signaling behavior, with most males signaling more often and more attractively during the times of day when mating activity is highest in the wild. Most male G. pennsylvanicus chirped more often and louder, with shorter interpulse durations, pulse periods, chirp durations, and interchirp durations, and at slightly higher carrier frequencies during the time of the day that mating activity is highest in the wild. Similarly, most male G. veletis chirped more often, with more pulses per chirp, longer interpulse durations, pulse periods, and chirp durations, shorter interchirp durations, and at lower carrier frequencies during the time of peak mating activity in the wild. Among-male variation in signaling plasticity was high, with some males signaling in an apparently maladaptive manner. Body size explained some of the among-male variation in G. pennsylvanicus plasticity but not G. veletis plasticity. Overall, our findings suggest that crickets exhibit phenotypically plastic mate attraction signals that closely match the fluctuating socio-sexual context they experience

Positive relationship between signalling time and flight capability in the Texas field cricket, Gryllus texensis

A trade-off between dispersal ability and reproduction is generally thought to explain the persistence of wing dimorphism in insects, although this trade-off has received minimal attention in male insects. Research on male sand cricket, Gryllus firmus, supports the trade-off hypothesis insofar as flight capable cricket's spend significantly less time signalling for potential mates than their flightless counterparts. By contrast, here I show that this expected trade-off between signalling time and wing dimorphism does not exist in a male con

Quantifying division of labor: Borrowing tools from sociology, sociobiology, information theory, landscape ecology, and biogeography

How do we quantify division of labor? We review several fields (sociology, landscape ecology, statistics, information theory, and biogeography) that have been cognizant of these questions and been somewhat successful at answering them. We review fourteen indices for quantifying division of labor, sensu lato, which can be categorized into four families: Shannon's index/entropy, Simpson's index, geometric mean, and standard/absolute deviation (including coefficients of variation). We argue that those indices using matrix inputs will simultaneously quantify the interplay between all individuals and all tasks and will thus best capture the essence of division of labor

Swimming Eastern Chipmunks, Tamias striatus, and Hairy-tailed Mole, Parascalops breweri, in Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park, Ontario

We report swimming Eastern Chipmunks, Tamias striatus, and a swimming Hairy-tailed Mole, Parascalops breweri, in southern Ontario in Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park. Although naturally swimming Eastern Chipmunks have been seen before, they have never been previously documented in the literature. Ours appears to be the first photograph of a swimming Hairy-tailed Mole and the first report of one successfully and apparently voluntarily swimming

Using machine learning techniques to classify cricket sound

This study proposes to classify cricket calls using feature selection and ensemble learning in noisy environments. After collecting cricket calls, we first extract both temporal and frequency features from each frame. Then, statistical features over all frames are calculated including mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis. For temporal feature, we use zero crossing rate, short-time energy and Shannon entropy. Frequency features include Mel-frequ