How females of chirping and trilling field crickets integrate the ‘what’ and ‘where’ of male acoustic signals during decision making

Abstract

In crickets acoustic communication serves mate selection. Female crickets have to perceive and integrate male cues relevant for mate choice while confronted with several different signals in an acoustically diverse background. Overall female decisions are based on the attractiveness of the temporal pattern (informative about the 'what') and on signal intensity (informative about the 'where') of male calling songs. Here, we investigated how the relevant cues for mate choice are integrated during the decision process by females of five different species of chirping and trilling field crickets. Using a behavioral design, female preferences in no-choice and choice situations for male calling songs differing in pulse rate, modulation depth, intensities, chirp/trill arrangements and temporal shifts were examined. Sensory processing underlying decisions in female field crickets is rather similar as combined evidence suggested that incoming song patterns were analyzed separately by bilaterally paired networks for pattern attractiveness and pattern intensity. A downstream gain control mechanism leads to a weighting of the intensity cue by pattern attractiveness. While remarkable differences between species were observed with respect to specific processing steps, closely related species exhibited more similar preferences than did more distantly related species.

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“…For example, one study used crickets to identify how protein and carbohydrate levels influenced weight, muscle mass, and fat reserves [86]. Crickets have been widely used within behavioral tests [87][88][89]. For example, one study used crickets with a plus-shaped maze to examine predator-induced stress and found that the crickets showed consistent behavioral responses in their tests [90].…”

Insect Hybridization and Climate Change

“…Males produce a conspicuous longdistance calling song to attract females from afar and, once in close proximity, switch to a lower intensity courtship song that is required before females will mount to receive the sperm-containing packet. Female crickets show the strongest preferences for temporal features of the calling and courtship songs (Gabel et al, 2016), and both songs contribute to precopulatory isolation between species (Fitzpatrick and Gray, 2001;Jang and Gerhardt, 2006;Maroja et al, 2014;Gray et al, 2016;Hennig et al, 2016). Closely related Hawaiian swordtail crickets (Laupala sp.…”

Multivariate female preference tests reveal latent perceptual biases

“…Within Gryllus, the two species are not close relatives (electronic supplementary material, figure S2), but both typically call with a three to five pulse chirp at unusually slow pulse rates: at 248C, G. firmus average about 18 p s 21 [27], whereas G#13 average about 10 p s 21 (DA Gray 2005, unpublished data); these are among the slowest pulse rates in North American Gryllus. Because pulse rate is consistently a principal song feature important in cricket song recognition [16,28], examination of species with low pulse rates might reveal unexpected effects of signal processing.…”