Small, quiet types get drowned out. Unless they cheat the system.

December 17, 2020 8:13 PM

Small, quiet crickets turn leaves into megaphones to blare their mating call "A carefully crafted leaf can double the volume of a male’s song, helping it compete for females" [SLScienceNews]
posted by hippybear (20 comments total)

"they’re essentially expanding this resonance structure, using the leaf “a bit like a loudspeaker or a megaphone,”

Wayward Pines had a timer.
posted by clavdivs at 8:28 PM on December 17, 2020

I’ll give this a try when bars open again.
posted by mundo at 8:40 PM on December 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

Biologists first spotted crickets creating leaf-speakers, called baffles, and singing from them, or baffling, in 1975. Since then, the baffling behavior has been reported in two other species, but wasn’t clear exactly how it benefits individual crickets.

The author saw an opportunity, and grabbed it without hesitation.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:17 PM on December 17, 2020 [15 favorites]

So these crickets are horny then?
posted by brundlefly at 9:29 PM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

these crickets show that sophisticated behaviors aren’t just for big, complex brains

as they've been doing for years
posted by flabdablet at 11:29 PM on December 17, 2020

When you wish upon a star,
Your mating call goes twice as far.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:40 PM on December 17, 2020 [3 favorites]

I don't think the bioRxiv fulltext link was in the article:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.080143v1
posted by Charles Bronson Pinchot at 12:23 AM on December 18, 2020

Does this count as tool use?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:58 AM on December 18, 2020 [4 favorites]

That's really interesting. I wonder how it might affect the evolution of female crickets' preferences?
Will they evolve better discrimination, in order to avoid mating with the 'cheating' quiet males?
Or will the evolutionary forces favour discrimination in favour of the males who use baffles, because in practice they're better at reproducing despite not actually having loud calls?
posted by vincebowdren at 5:29 AM on December 18, 2020

Or will the louder males also use tools, make themselves louder yet, and still get all the dates?

There's some kind of allegory in this, but it is way too early in the morning to figure out what it is.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:49 AM on December 18, 2020

> Or will the louder males also use tools, make themselves louder yet, and still get all the dates?

I think the takeaway is that, eventually, this planet will be unlivable due to the ever-escalating sonic arms race in the cricket community. Perhaps this is the real Great Filter? An overwhelming, discordant susurration of mindless mating calls.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 6:32 AM on December 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

Ah yes, the fancy/loud car of the cricket world.
posted by lextex at 6:36 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

They're really saying "Hey good lookin', I'll be back to pick you up later!"
posted by Daily Alice at 7:06 AM on December 18, 2020 [3 favorites]

An overwhelming, discordant susurration of mindless mating calls

...describes every party I went to in my twenties
posted by kinnakeet at 7:55 AM on December 18, 2020 [8 favorites]

There's some kind of allegory in this, but it is way too early in the morning to figure out what it is.

I'm thinking stars and Sneetch bellies.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:38 AM on December 18, 2020

I now want to write a science fiction story where this competition was the driving force for the evolution of intelligence in a species of giant, cricket-shaped aliens who are noteworthy for enjoying sex and being phenomenal acoustical engineers.
posted by mark k at 9:56 AM on December 18, 2020

Whatever the mechanism, O. henryi males have evolved a remarkably effective mating strategy,

Better this than selling their watches to buy their mates a comb, that's for sure.
posted by biogeo at 10:37 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

I don't want no scrubs
Hangin' out of a rolled-up leaf
Tryin' to holla at me
posted by bartleby at 11:11 AM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Does this mean that Harley Davidson owners have the brains of a cricket?
posted by JackFlash at 12:45 PM on December 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

Whatever the mechanism, O. henryi males have evolved a remarkably effective mating strategy,

Isn't the effective mating strategy the only one that ends up evolving? Seems like the ineffective mating strategies will sort of die out.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:17 PM on December 18, 2020 [1 favorite]