Article Abstract:
Female crickets use the calling songs of the males for species recognition and mate selection. Genetic variation in song production, elements of the calling song and body size were gauged for the cricket Gryllus firmus. The findings showed that the heritabilities of morphological structures range from 0.42 to 0.73 while those of the song elements range from 0.10 to 0.35. An analogy between sire and dam components indicated the possibility of non-additive and maternal effects. Lastly, the resulting low correlation between body size and song components suggested that female G. firmus is unlikely to use the calling song to estimate male body size or wing morph.
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Article Abstract:
The trade-offs between calling behavior and macroptery in the wing-dimorphic cricket, Gryllus firmus, were investigated to determine whether the trade-off is maintained for majority of the adult male crickets' life span and the effect of resource stress on the trade-off. The short-winged crickets generally called longer compared to their long-winged counterparts for the stressed group. Despite the reduction in the absolute call durations in the stressed group, the relative call durations were maintained as well as the percentage of females that move towards the micropterous males.
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Article Abstract:
The ability of micropterous and macropterous Gryllus firmus to attract females was studied to determine if mating success is influenced by the time spent calling. The results showed that micropterous G. firmus spent more time calling and were more successful in attracting mates than their macropterous counterparts. It is suggested that this tradeoff between macroptery and mating success is the reason behind the maintenance of wing dimorphism in G. firmus.
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