Crickets Chirp To Flirt | Deep Look

Teacher or professor: Deep Look
Subject: Biology
Content of the Lesson: Male crickets have a different song for every occasion: to advertise their fitness, woo a mate or keep their rivals away. So how do they make all those different chirps? One word: stridulation. Please join our community on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/deeplook SUBSCRIBE to Deep Look! http://goo.gl/8NwXqt DEEP LOOK is a ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small. --- Ask most people about crickets and you’ll probably hear that they’re all pretty much the same: just little insects that jump and chirp. But there are actually dozens of different species of field crickets in the U.S. And because they look so similar, the most common way scientists tell them apart is by the sounds they make. “When I hear an evening chorus, all I hear are the different species,” said David Weissman, a research associate in entomology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Weissman has spent the last 45 years working to identify all the species of field crickets west of the Mississippi River. In December, he published his findings in the journal Zootaxa, identifying 35 species of field crickets in the western states, including 17 new species. California alone hosts 12 species. But many closely resemble the others. So even for one of the nation’s top experts, telling them apart isn’t a simple task. “It turns out song is a good way to differentiate,” Weissman said. --- How do crickets chirp? On the underside of male crickets’ wings there’s a vein that sticks up covered in tiny microscopic teeth, all in a row. It’s called the file. There's a hard edge on the lower wing called the scraper. When he rubs his wings together - the scraper on the bottom wing grates across all those little teeth on the top wing. It’s like running your thumb down the teeth of a comb. This process of making sound is called stridulation. --- How do crickets hear? Crickets have tiny ears, called tympana on each of their two front legs. They use them to listen for danger and to hear each other calling. --- Why do crickets chirp? Crickets have several different types of songs that serve different purposes. The familiar repetitive chirping song is a mating call that male crickets produce to attract females that search for potential mates. If a female makes physical contact with a male he will typically switch to a second higher-pitched, quieter courtship song. If instead a male cricket comes in contact with another adult male he will let out an angry-sounding rivalry call to tell his competitor to back off. ---+ Read the entire article on KQED Science: https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2020/01/14/crickets-chirp-to-flirt/ ---+ For more information: Professor Fernando Montealegre-Z’s bioacoustics lab http://bioacousticssensorybiology.weebly.com/ David Weissman’s article cataloging field crickets in the U.S. https://www.biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/article/view/zootaxa.4705.1.1 ---+ Shoutout! 🏆Congratulations 🏆to the following fans on our YouTube community tab for correctly identifying the name and function of the kidney bean-shaped structure on the cricket’s tibia - the tympanum, or tympanal organ: sjhall2009 Damian Porter LittleDreamerRem Red Segui Ba Ri ---+ Thank you to our Top Patreon Supporters ($10+ per month)! Alice Kwok Allen Amber Miller Aurora Aurora Mitchell Barbara Pinney Bethany Bill Cass Blanca Vides Burt Humburg Caitlin McDonough Carlos Carrasco Chris B Emrick Chris Murphy Cindy McGill Companion Cube Daisuke Goto Daniel Weinstein David Deshpande Dean Skoglund Edwin Rivas Egg-Roll Elizabeth Ann Ditz Geidi Rodriguez Gerardo Alfaro Guillaume Morin Jane Orbuch Joao Ascensao johanna reis John King Johnnyonnyful Josh Kuroda Joshua Murallon Robertson Justin Bull Kallie Moore Karen Reynolds Katherine Schick Kathleen R Jaroma Kendall Rasmussen Kristy Freeman KW Kyle Fisher Laura Sanborn Laurel Przybylski Leonhardt Wille Levi Cai Louis O'Neill luna Mary Truland monoirre Natalie Banach Nathan Wright Nicolette Ray Nikita Noreen Herrington Osbaldo Olvera Pamela Parker Richard Shalumov Rick Wong Robert Amling Robert Warner Roberta K Wright Sarah Khalida Mohamad Sayantan Dasgupta Shelley Pearson Cranshaw Silvan Wendland Sonia Tanlimco SueEllen McCann Supernovabetty Syniurge Tea Torvinen TierZoo Titania Juang Trae Wright Two Box Fish WhatzGames ---+ About KQED KQED, an NPR and PBS affiliate in San Francisco, CA, serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, Radio and web media. Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios. Deep Look is a project of KQED Science, which is also supported by the National Science Foundation, the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation, the Vadasz Family Foundation, the Fuhs Family Foundation, Campaign 21 and the members of KQED.


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