Acoustic communication in the trilling field cricket,Gryllus rubens (Orthoptera: Gryllidae)

Is cricket courtship song condition dependent?

“…Female preferences based on male calling song have been studied extensively (e.g. Ulagaraj & Walker 1975;Pollack & Hoy 1979;Doherty 1985;Hedrick 1986;Simmons 1988;Doherty & Callos 1991;Forrest & Green 1991;Doherty & Storz 1992;Simmons & Zuk 1992;Wagner et al 1995;Doherty & Howard 1996;Simmons & Ritchie 1996;Wagner 1996;Gray 1997;Hedrick & Weber 1998;Gray & Cade 1999a, b;Gray & Cade 2000;Shaw 2000;Shaw & Herlihy 2000). Female preferences based on male courtship song have received much less attention (Crankshaw 1979;Burk 1983;Boake 1984;Libersat et al 1994;Balakrishnan & Pollack 1996;Nelson & Nolen 1997;Wagner & Reiser 2000;M.…”

Sound signalling in orthoptera

“…In Ephippigerida taeniata the range of temperatures over which chirp-rate and alternation is altered is 19-27 o C. The chirp rate increases over this range of temperatures, but then appears to reach a maximum as the rate at 35 o C is not significantly different from that at 27 o C . The lower temperature limit for stridulation has been measured (Stiedl and Bickmeyer, 1991) In crickets the pulse rate of the song increases linearly with temperature and this relationship has been demonstrated in a number of species (Doherty and Callos, 1991), for example the trilling cricket Gryllus rubens and the chirping cricket G. fultoni. The effect of temperature on pulse duration in G. rubens was less pronounced than in G. fultoni, but it still increased with increasing air temperature.…”

“…This has been reviewed by Doherty and Hoy (1985); see also, for example, Doherty and Callos (1991), Doherty and Storz (1992), Stumpner and von Helversen (1992) and Hennig and Weber (1997). Hennig and Weber looked at two sympatric species, Teleogryllus commodus and T. oceanicus, which both have calls containing chirps and trills (where a chirp is a series of syllables separated by relatively long intervals, a trill is a series of syllables separated by a relatively short interval, and a syllable is one wing closure).…”

Female recognition of trills in the male calling song of the field cricket, Teleogryllus taiwanemma

“…Each adult male was placed in a separate plastic cage (12 ¥ 20 ¥ 14 cm) and his calling song-the song emitted spontaneously by a solitary male-was recorded for more than 240 s using a DAT recorder (Sony TCD-D100) and a microphone (Sony ECM-G3M). All recordings were performed at 25 ± 1°C to control for temperature, which is known to influence calling song (Walker 1962;Doherty and Callos 1991).…”

“…Several empirical studies have shown that females prefer conspecific male song, and these studies have analyzed the song parameters of key discriminatory features of conspecific male song (Hill et al 1972;Doherty and Callos 1991;Gray and Cade 2000). These studies have indicated that variance in temporal parameters is more important to female preference than variance in frequency (Hill et al 1972;Pollack and Hoy 1979;Doherty and Callos 1991;Henry et al 1999;Gray and Cade 2000). Neurobiological data have been found to support these results by suggesting that a certain brain neuron, called the band-pass neuron, is tuned to a narrow range of pulse rates, which are typical of the conspecific calling song (Schildberger et al 1989).…”