Hawaiian men’s cricket cannot be hidden from the bustling boogaiman for a long time.
In just a few years, parasitic flies that kill crickets have evolved It’s more sensitive On their new secret love song of prey, researchers report on February 20th Current Biology.
Nocturne fly Ormia ochracea They lay eggs on cricket and hatch them into larvae to create a host diet. Flies native to North America were introduced to Hawaii around 1989 and began targeting the island’s Pacific Field Cricket (Teleogryllus Oceanicus) and eavesdrops on their chirp to find them.
Shortly after the introduction of flies, the shape of the wings of several male Pacific field crickets evolved rapidly, giving insects the unusual purging or rattle calls. This could have allowed the man to “sing” to the woman without warning the flies. However, researchers wondered whether the fly would be pushed back.
“Is there a response from the fly, or will this really turn out to be an evolving system like a private communication mode they eavesdropped on? [fly] Can’t you find it? ” says Robin Tinchterra, an evolutionary and behavioral ecologist at the University of Denver.
In the lab, Tingitella and her colleagues compared O. ochracea Flying from Hawaii and Florida. The team measured how the fly’s auditory neurons responded to certain sound frequencies and how the fly responded to different cricket songs.
Hawaiian flies were more sensitive to the frequencies of about 5 and 10 kilohearts, the two frequencies that dominate regular cricket songs, than their Florida counterparts. Hawaiian flies were also likely to move in response to cricket pills.
In Hawaii, the team invited fly to the trap with a recording of a cricket song. Nearly 20% of flies were caught using perling or rattling songs, and Cricket’s newly released track (not even a decade ago) suggests that many flies can already be detected.
The findings point to adaptation and conspiracy, Tingitella could ultimately develop into an evolutionary cat-mouse game between cricket and fly, Tingitella says.
More data on fly hearing could provide a starting point for understanding how crickets respond, researcher Norman Lee, a neuroethologist at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, said from which researchers could make predictions about how innovation races between cricket and fly can play.
