BI/ENT300 PESTS, PLAGUES AND POLITICS

Student Edition - 2001 revision

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INSECTS As SINGERS:

Webster: Definition of Music

1. "...the art and science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds or tones in varying melody, harmony, or rhythm, especially so as to form structurally complete and emotionally expressive compositions."

2. "...any rhythmic sequence of pleasing sounds, as of birds, water, etc."

The above negates any criticism of those who would say that music is solely within the realm of humans!!!

- Orthoptera the best known Order of "singing" insects, or most easily recognized (who does not acknowledge the anticipated presence of spring by the singing of crickets and frogs)

- Others orders with singers include: Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Isoptera, Homoptera & Lepidoptera.

Obviously a COMMUNICATION function for:

1. Reproduction: primarily for mate attraction and/or territorial display.

2. Repellence: Passalid Beetles (Bess beetles), Hissing cockroach, Death-head Moth.

3. Defense Alarms: termites, et alia.

4. Food gathering: Parasitoids and predators (PHONOTAXIS)

Mechanisms for Sound Production (Insect musical 'instruments' if you will)

1. Stridulation - rubbing of one body part against another. Analog = violin - Examples: grasshoppers, beetles - THE most common mechanism (instrument)

2. Vibration of special membranes known as TYMBALS Analog = drums - Examples: cicadas and some leafhoppers

3. Striking some body part against the substrate Analog = xylophone - Example: damp wood termites

4. Forcible ejection of air or fluid from a body opening. Analog = brass - Bombardier beetle - fluid from anus; Death-head moth - air from 'mouth'; Hissing roach - air from spiracles

5. Vibration of wings or thorax. Analog = reed instruments

Incidental sound from many, many species e.g.,  honey bee wings - Higher pitch (cycles per second) for an "angry" bee. 

The Most Noted Singers: Grasshoppers - Crickets - Katydids

Stridulation as the primary method of sound production

Two Song Types (Styles?)

1. "Calling" songs by males for females

2. "Fighting" songs by males for territorial defense and/or dominance

Temporal Song Separation - Don't sing at the wrong time or you might attract a female of the wrong species (avoids "noisy" airwaves)

Night Singers - nearly all katydids; Day Singers - some grasshoppers; Day &/or Night - most crickets

Chorus Singers:

Cone-headed grasshoppers & tree crickets

Two or more individuals singing simultaneously, with their sound pulses (songs) synchronized or alternating - more effective at attracting females.

Grasshopper - Katydid - Cricket????? What's the Difference??????

Grasshoppers found in many different families in Orthoptera

Katydids within the family Tettigoniidae (along with some grasshoppers)

Crickets with in the family Gryllidae

Singing Orthoptera are/have been among the favorites as insect PETS for millennia. (The Canaries of the Insect World)

• The caged singers - especially crickets in Asia
• Frost (1942) - Tokyo with 50 markets dealing with caged crickets & katydids
• Japan: an annual festival of the singing insects.

"Hopper Houses" of Hamburg: 17th, 18th and 19th centuries

Commercially available caged crickets unusual for Europe with exception of Hamburg.

Doll Houses for Orthoptera - available as late as 1936.

Favored Singers: long-horned grasshoppers & katydids - NOT the crickets most used in Asia.

Why Not?? In Europe, many cultures associated crickets with the devil (more later).

El Grillo (the cricket) by Josquin des Pres - Renaissance composer - French born, but lived most of his life    in Italy - Worked for Cardinal Sforza in Milan during 1470's

• The cricket is a good singer....................................El grillo e buon cantore
• Who sings for a long time..........................................che tiene longo verso
• The cricket sings just for fun.....................................Dale beve grillo canta
• The cricket is a good singer....................................El grillo e buon cantore
• But unlike the birds who..............................Ma non fa come gli altri uccelli
• Fly off when they've sung a little.......................come li han cantato un poco
• The cricket just stays where he is........Van' de fatto in altro loco, sempre el grillo sta pur saldo
• When the weather is really hot..........................Quando la maggior el caldo
• He sings only for love.......................................alhor canta sole per amore.

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Some Classic Insect Pieces and Artists:

ca. 1280 - Ch'ien Hsuan - Chinese master painter, poet & naturalist of the Sung Dynasty

"...(an) achievement of incorporating such a variety of insects so realistically within such a small compass." McE. Evan. 1974. Insect Wld. Digest

Four Orders of Insecta: Orthoptera - six species readily identified

• Coleoptera - false blister beetle
• Diptera - two families
• Odonata - two families

{see Insect World Digest (1976) 3(2): 12-21}

17th century entomologist, artist, traveler - German (b. 1647; d. 1717)

Born into an art/craft family - her father a renowned engraver Trained as a miniaturist & botanical painter (bio-illustrator)

An avocational entomologist with a love of butterflies.

In the introduction to one of her "Tropical Portfolios" she wrote the following:

"...this small offering was done only in the honor of God, as without him she would never have undertaken it, much less let herself be persuaded to put it into print, especially as, being a woman with little time after having dispatched with household cares, this might be mistaken for unseeming ambition."

{We assume also that she, as an early feminist reformer, was writing tongue-in-cheek.}

In 1681 she parted from her "rounder" husband and joined the "Ladadistes," a religious splinter group who sought to return to primitive and pure Christianity: Communal living-no private property-no formal marriage-called themselves the "Children of Light."

1689 - took her youngest daughter to Surinam in South America to study and paint - She was an entomological Audubon.

Andrew Wyeth - premier American realist

1959 - a feral colony from the previous Spring caught his eye

Discuss biology of swarms & where Wyeth's bees' made an error!!

Albrecht Dürer - b. 1471; d. 1528 - Master artist of his time (& forever, actually)

German - son of a goldsmith & a grandfather who was a painter/publisher

Stag Beetle a colored drawing with tempera.

1505 - accepted as an authentic

Entomologically: Order: COLEOPTERA; Family Lucanidae (Stag Beetles) A wood inhabiting insect (immature stage)

Vincent Van Gogh - 1889 (remember him, the Dutchman who cut off his own ear??)

Order Coleoptera: Family Scarabaeidae

The Japanese Beetle - Popillia japonica - a serious pest in the eastern

U.S. - Introduced on nursery stock ca. 1916.

Pest of lawn grasses - univoltine and over-winters in the larval stage.

The Kachina Spirit-Beings of the Hopi et alia

"In Hopi mythology, Kachinas were beneficent spirit-beings who accompanied people from the underworld, the origins of all peoples."

This course section exhibits language chauvinism, i.e., English Poetry Only!!

Are there Insect Poets?? - Certainly Not!!

However with a small amount of Poetic License, Yes there are!!

ALICE IN WONDERLAND - comprised of two books: {Lewis Carroll - English author, a.k.a., Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician.}

1) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

2) Through the Looking-glass

"Through the Looking-glass" Chapter 3 - 'Looking-glass Insects'

"...she found herself sitting quietly under a tree - while the Gnat, (for that was the insect she had been talking to), was balancing itself on a twig just over her head, and fanning her with its wings. It certainly was a very large Gnat; 'about the size of a chicken,' Alice thought. Still she couldn't feel nervous with it, after they had been talking together for so long. "...then you don't like all insects?' the Gnat went on, as quietly as if nothing had happened. 'I like them when they can talk,' Alice said. 'None of them ever talk where I come from.'"

et cetera

Joyful Noise - Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman (1988)

Creation of Don Marquis (1878-1937) an American humorist.

Archy first appeared in the "Sun Dial" column of the paper NEW YORK SUN

Several books evolved from Archy's 'writings'

ARCHY & MEHITABLE

ARCHY DOES HIS PART

ARCHY'S LIFE OF METHITABLE

All humorous reflections of life in early 20th century America.

References:

Bains, S. 1994. Even a robot cricket always gets her mate. Science 266: 1809.

Capinera, J.L. 1993. Insects in art and religion: the American southwest. American Entomologist 39(4): 221-229.

Connor W.E. & M.N. Connor. 1992. Moths that go click in the night. Wings. 17(1): 7-11.

Dethier, V.G. 1993. Crickets and Katydids, Concerts and Solos. Harvard Univ. Press. Cambridge, MA.

Erlanger, L. 1976. Maria Sybilla Merian - 17th century entomologist, artist, and teacher. Insect Wld. Digest 3(2): 12-21.

Fleischman, P. 1988. Joyful Noise - Poems for Two Voices. Harper & Row, Pub.

Kevan, D.K.M. 1975. The hopper house of Hamburg. Insect Wld. Digest 2(6): 2-9.

Kevan, D.K.M. 1974. Ch'ien Hsuan, thirteenth century naturalist - the oldest known portrayal of predation by dragonflies.  Insect Wld. Digest 1(6): 26-28.

Pierce, G.W. 1948. Songs of Insects. Harvard Univ. Press. Cambridge, MA.