Songs and names of 44 species of Caribbean crickets(Orthoptera: Gryllidae)
Thomas J. Walker
Department of Entomology & Nematology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
E-mail:
Key words
calling songs, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St. Croix, Grand Cayman, Hispaniola, Montserrat,
Tables
Table 1.Field trips by TJ Walker to Caribbean localities to study ensiferan Orthoptera.
[contains the directly relevant parts of SMtbl1.xlsx]
Table 2 Names and associated songs of n species of Caribbean crickets
[same as SMtbl2 but with columns C, D, and N omitted]
Supporting materials
SMtbl1.xlsx Field trips by TJ Walker to Caribbean localities to study ensiferan Orthoptera.
[source table for Table 1 (includes data on katydids and some additional trips]
SMtbl2.xlsx Fundamental features of the songs of 44 species from Table 2.
[source table for Table 2; additional details about the songs are in SM_SongNotes]
SM_SongNotes.docx
[in depth, quantified notes made in preparation for future papers]
SM_SongExcerpts
[zip file of 55 wav files of song excerpts illustrating the songs of44 species]
SM_PRat25.xlsx
[spreadsheet for estimating pulse rate at 25°C from pulse rates as measured at other temperatures]
SM_FieldNotes
[six PDF files totaling 28MB (already archived at IR@UF)]
Abstract
Songs of 43 species of crickets recorded during my 1966-1992 field work inthe Caribbean are associated with the scientific names that Dan Otte subsequently provided for them. Making these associations revealedunexpected complexityin certain songs, especially those of Trigonidiinae (Anaxipha, Cyrtoxipha) andEneopterinae (Orocharis, Antillicharis, Carylla, Laurella, Laurepa). [thenature of that complexity to be abstracted here] Cornell’s Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds has provided direct access to this complexity by archiving and digitizingmost of my nearly 900tape recordings of Caribbean crickets. Supplementary Materials include 55 wav-file excerpts that document salient features of the recorded songs of the 43 species.
Introduction
Upon being hired by University of Florida to teach and develop a research program, I began a study of Florida’s “acoustic” insects and soon found that southern Florida’s crickets and katydids had strong affinities with Caribbean species. This meant that when I found new species of crickets and katydids in south Florida in habitats that also occurred in the Caribbean, these “new” species may have already been described from Cuba (less than 160 km across the hurricane-prone Straits of Florida) or elsewhere in the Caribbean.
Because Cuba was the most likely source of introductions of Caribbean species to Florida, it became first priority for expanding the geographical extent of my south Florida field work. Unfortunately my first urge to do fieldwork in Cuba (1962) coincided with the Cuban missile crisis (1962), and the strained relations between Cuba and the United States continued to thwart it beyond the end of my Caribbean fieldwork, in Montserrat 30 years later. SMtbl1 summarizes the 11 visits made to Caribbean islands; the field notes made during visits from 1968 to 1992 can be accessed in the University of Florida Institutional Repository. [as well as in the SM for this paper?]
From 2003 to 2007 Cornell’s Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds digitized and archived most of the Walker Tape Library [WTL] and made the wav files accessible online as the archiving progressed. The value of access to these songs was lessened because only n[to be added]of the species of Caribbean crickets that I had recognized primarily by differences in their calling songs could be attributed to described species.
When I learned that Dan Otte had begun an effort to illustrate the taxonomic relevant morphology of as many Caribbean crickets as he could assemble and to bring some order to their classification and nomenclature I gladly loaned him the material from my Caribbean studies. These studies culminated in Otte and Daniel Perez-Gelabert’s2009 publication of Caribbean Crickets, a 792-page monograph that treated 585 species, of which 458 were new. Otte (2009, 2014) made some corrections to the monograph and described five additional species from my specimens. Of the 45 instances of new species being based on my material, this paper associates 43 with their songs, mostly by reference to recordings of the holotype but in all cases by means judged reliable. It also provides preliminary results of the analysis of these songs, and, in Supplementary Materials [SM], provides direct access to excerpts of archived wav files of the songs.
Methods
Caribbean field work.My collecting in the Caribbean relied heavily on trying, in each targeted locality or habitat, to capture one or more individuals producing each of the calling songs heard. These songs were audio recorded even if no voucher of a calling male was obtained at the time. When male crickets were captured, whether calling or not, they were often transferred to cages and monitored for several nights before they were killed and pinned or preserved in alcohol. Using these procedures helped reach the goal of obtaining clean recordings positively associated with one or morespecimens that had made each song. Recording equipment for each recording is in tblRecordedSongs of the Walker Tape Library (see [or Most recordings were made with a Nagra III or IV tape recorder and a dynamic microphone, often aided by a 60 cm diameter aluminum parabola. The number of tapes and the number of species believed to have been recorded for each of the seven islands during each visit are in Table 1. Between 2003 and 2007 Cornell’s Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds (MLNS) digitized and archived most of my tapes of Caribbean cricket songs and, by 2008, MLNS had made wav files of these recordings accessible online (
Field techniques.Most collecting and audiorecording began at dusk and continued until midnight or beyond. The “beyond”often included caged individuals near bedside. Collecting one or more specimens for each song heard in the field required homing on the song and capturing the calling male. This was facilitated by headlights, sometimes dimmable and with red filters, and by continually estimating the direction of the call as the stalker spiraled closer. Such searches were sometimes aided by a helper who pointed in the perceived direction of the call while keeping his distance but sometimes moving laterally to provide a surer estimate of the song-maker’s location. Quiet or quieted males and females were discovered by shining vegetation, turning stones or logs, and excavating burrows into which males had retreated or from which calls had issued. Specimens were logged into numbered or lettered vials for matching with notes dictated into mini recordersand with notes made on the Nagra after each song was recorded. Fieldnotes from all collecting trips were scanned and archived at University of Florida’s Institutional Repository (IR@UF).
Naming of excerpts from complete recordings. The audio file of a complete recording as archived by MLNS generally includes spoken comments about the context of the song that is the subject of the recording. In most cases comments come immediately after the recorded songs but in some cases they occur prior to recorded song and, rarely, during a portion of the song. Thus the first step in analyzing the song component of a recording was to produce an “e1” excerpt of the song by deleting initial and ending comments. If the recording had minimal interfering songs or noise, two properties of the song (pulse rate and carrier frequency at ambient temperature) could be determined without further processing and a third (expected pulse rate at 25C)could be calculated with SM_PRat25.xlsx. If acoustical interference obscured the amplitude modulation pattern of the song to be analyzed, an “e2” excerpt was made by using the FFT filter function of Cool Edit to band-pass filter the e1 excerpt. Quantifying important features of songs more complex than a long-continued series of pulses at a uniform rate required examining selected portions of the e1 or e2 excerpts. To preserve the portions responsible for decisions about such features of the song, “e3” excerpts were made. When more than one, they were labeled e3a, e3b, …..
Selecting a recorded song as typical of a named species. If the species had a male holotype and more than one recording was believed to be of a song produced by that species, the most likely to be typical of the species was assumed tobe of a song made by the holotype of that species. Without a song made by the holotype, the choice became selecting the cleanest recording of asongbelieved to have beenproduced by a conspecific of the holotype. This reasoning led to assigning selections to one of these four categories: (1a) Recording of a song of the holotype-to-be after it was captured and caged. (1b) Recording of a song of the holotype-to-be while it was free in the field but afterwardsquickly captured.(2) Recording of a songbelieved to be the same as that of the holotype, recorded at the site wherethe holotype was collected.(3) Recording of a song believed to be the same as that of the holotype, but not recorded at the collection site of the holotype. Songs believed to be the same as the song of the holotype were those that belonged to the same “song species” as named and recognized during the field work and later verified by analysis of recordings made and studies of specimens collected.
Results
Of the Caribbean cricket species described as newby O&P (2009) and Otte (2014), 45 qualified as candidates for association with song recordings in the Walker Tape Library. Of these,43 could be associated with online files of their songs in MLNS (Table 2).
Discussion
[This section is important for the completion of the paper, but organizing and displaying the data to be discussed havehad first priority. It will mostly be a matter of ]
Scapsipedusjamaicensis is the only instance in which O&P 2009 described as new a species I had recognized during my Caribbean field studies yet designated as holotype a specimen not collected during those studies.
Acknowledgements[to be expanded]
Joceylyn Crane (recipient of grant that enabled my initial field work in Puerto Rico and Jamaica)
Tom Patton (recipient of grant that enabled my Jamaican field work)
Clarks of W. P. (Jamaican hosts)
George Miskimen (host in Puerto Rico 1969)
J. J. Whitesell (Jamaica & Grand Cayman 1970) (coneheads)
Peter Drummond (1969 PR, St.Croix;1970 Jamaica, Grand Cayman)(isopods)
James E. Lloyd (1968, 1985 Jamaica)(fireflies)
R. E. Woodruff (Jamaica 1968)(beetles)
Jack Schuster (1973 Haiti, Dominican Republic)(passalid beetles)
References cited [some not yet cited andothers will be added as the discussion is completed]
Otte, Daniel. 1992. Evolution of cricket songs. Journal of Orthoptera Research 1:25-49.
Otte, Daniel. 1992. Caribbean Crickets by D. Otte and D. Perez-Gelabert: Corrections and synonymies and a note on the type of Gryllodes greeniChopard (Orthoptera: Grylloidea). Transactions American Entomological Society 135(4): 487-491.
Otte, Daniel. 2014. Five new cricket species from the Caribbean (Grylloidea, Gryllidae, Eneopterinae). Transactions American Entomological Society 140: 000-000.
[8 pages, published 15 May 2014 (pagination not yet available)].
Otte, D. and Perez-Gelabert, D. 2009. Caribbean Crickets. The Orthopterists’ Society.792 pp.
Walker, T.J. 1973. Systematic and acoustic behavior of United States and Caribbean short-tailed crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae: Anurogryllus]. Annals Entomological Society of America 66(6): 1269=1277.
Walker, T.J. 2012.The scientific names of two common Florida crickets (Orthoptera, Gryllidae). Florida Entomologist 95(4): 936-938.
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