Photo inset is of an Ormia ochracea laying her eggs into a Hawaiian cricket (Teleogryllus oceanicus).
When you hear crickets chirping, you are hearing only males. Female crickets don’t chirp. The males do, to attract a mate. The warmer it gets, the faster they chirp, the faster they chirp, the more attractive they are to females.
But 95% of Hawaiian crickets don’t chirp.
So how do they attract a mate? Scientists studied them on my hometown Island of Kauai, and found that…
…they steal them.
Scientists believe that the crickets evolved to not chirp. This is because they believe that the chirping not only attracted female crickets, but also the dreaded Ormia ochracea, a parasitic fly that lays its eggs into the cricket once it locates the chirper.
Male field crickets traditionally attract a mate by “singing” – creating a sound by rhythmically scraping their wings back and forth. In Hawaii, however, their song attracts a less welcome female: parasitic flies, whose larvae devour and kill the crickets from the inside out. To survive, some smart field crickets have rapidly evolved to remove the sound-producing structures on their wings, meaning their vigorous “song” no longer endangers them, as it is completely silent. These mutations were first identified on the island of Kauai…
