ABS Media Information

Seasonal variation in selection on male calling song

On a warm summer evening, you can often hear crickets singing, which they do to attract females. But all this singing also attracts a fly that lays her larvae (her eggs hatch inside her body) on the singing male that kill him within a few days. In Florida where this study was conducted, flies are around only during the autumnl but the crickets sing all year. This means that spring males can sing whenever and as much as they want but autumn males are constantly faced with death whenever they sing for females. We found that fewer autumn males sing (they search for females without singing) and they are less likely to sing at dusk when flies are most active, but if an autumn male does sing, he sings more than does a spring male. This is because singing is more effective at attracting females in the autumn than in the spring.