Abstract
Male crickets attract females by rubbing forewings together to produce calls. Louder calls are more effective, as they travel further, and attract more mates. However, crickets are small and produce calls inefficiently. Tree crickets make baffles, which reduce acoustic short-circuiting and increase efficiency. Previous work showed that tree cricket baffles function optimally (Mhatre et al., 2017). Here, we ask why baffle use is uncommon in crickets despite its advantages. We hypothesize that baffling may be rare because it is advantageous only for certain species. To test this, we modelled the calling efficiencies of cricket wings within their acoustic-morphospace (ie: the complete space of natural wing sizes and call frequency range). Using finite and boundary element analysis we calculated cricket acoustic efficiency in multiple of acoustic environments, incorporating both reflective and scattering surfaces like the ground and vegetation into our analyses. Within the efficiency landscapes generated from these data, we plotted the positions of 111 species across 7 phylogenetic clades. Using landscape and clade level analyses, we found that calling from the ground and using a baffle represent effective alternate strategies that both maximize calling efficiency.
- insect sound production
- crickets
- tool use
- finite element modeling
- boundary element modeling
- sound propagation
- acoustic efficiency
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
Two species had been assigned incorrectly to a clade. Figures and text were updated to reflect this change. The results did not change substantially.
