Crickets are some of the oldest and best studied singers of the animal world. Their ancestors were probably some of the first animals to break the silence of the dry land in the Permian and the Triassic (acoustic communication underwater had probably appeared long before that, albeit fossil evidence for that is scant.) The ubiquity…
Category: Orthoptera
A new voice in the chorus
Yesterday evening, right before the weather turned nasty, as I stood on the deck over my garden I suddenly caught a sound wave, one that I immediately recognized but had never before heard around my house. I ran to grab my recorder and was able to capture a snippet of the call. Seeing me pointing…
On the benefits of random collecting
In 1911, after a short and apparently unsatisfying stint as a lawyer, Keppel H. Barnard left his native London and joined the staff of the South African Museum in Cape Town. First a mere lab assistant, he quickly ascended the ranks, in 10 short years reaching the position of the museum’s director, which he held…
Bog killers
The one thing about plants that we take for granted is that they cannot really hurt you. Sure, some are full of toxic compounds and can be deadly poisonous if ingested. Others are covered with nasty spines or irritating hairs, and a tree can fall on your head during windy weather and crack your skull….
The chorus grows
On this sunny Columbus Day I stayed at home, which allowed me to discover another beautiful musician in my garden’s chorus, the Handsome Trig (Phyllopalpus pulchellus) (also known as the Red-headed Bush Cricket). I already wrote about this species, but I never suspected that I would find one of my favorite North American orthopterans in…
Music in my head
I have always wanted to be a musician. Not that I have any particular musical talents (and never learned to read music), but my fascination with sound was definitely one of the reasons for becoming an expert in the taxonomy of orthopteroid insects, nature’s preeminent musicians. Few things are more pleasant to me than sitting…
The Smaller Majority 