The GREAT LAKES ENTOMOLOGIST Vol. 5, No. 2 Summer 1972 The Singing Insects of Michigan RichardD. Alexander, Ann E. Pace and Daniel Otte THE GREAT LAKES ENTOMOLOGIST Published by the Michigan Entomological Society Volume 5 1972 No. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS The singing insects of Michigan Richard D. Alexander, Ann E. Pace and Daniel Otte . .33 COVER ILLUSTRATION The Northern True Katydid, Pterophylla camellifolia (Fabricius) (Orthoptera: Tet- tigoniidae), whose raucus calls of "katydid, katy-did" can be heard from the tops of deciduous trees in the southern part of the Lower Peninsula during the evenings of middle and late summer. THE MICHIGAN ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 197 1-1972 OFFICERS President Dean G. DiIlery President-Elect Richard C. Fleming Executive Secretary M. C. Nielsen Editor Irving J. Cantrall The Michigan Entomological Society traces its origins'to the old Detroit Entomological Society and was organized on 4 November 1954 to ". promote the science of entomology in all its branches and by all feasible means, and to advance cooperation and good fellowship among persons interested in entomology." The Society attempts to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information in both amateur and professional circles, and encourages the study of insects by youth. Membership in the Society, which serves the North Central States and adjacent Canada, is open to all persons interested in entomology. There are three paying classes of membership: Student (including those currently enrolled in college or graduate programs) - annual dues $2.00 Active - anriual dues $4.00 Institutional - annual dues $6.00 Sustaining - annual contribution $25.00 or more Dues are paid on a calendar year basis (Jan. I - Dec. 3 1 ). Memberships accepted before July 1 shall begin on the preceding January 1 ; memberships accepted at a later date shall begin the following January 1 unless the earlier date is requested and the required dues are paid. All members in good standing receive the Newsletter of the Society, published quarterly. All Active and Sustaining Members may vote in Society affairs. All dues, and contributions to the Society are deductible for Federal income tax purposes. SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION Institutions and organizations, as well as individuals not desiring the benefits of membership,may subsc~ibeto The GreatLakes Entomologist at the rate of $6.00 per volume. The journal is published quarterly; subscriptions are accepted only on a volume (4 issue) basis. Singlecopiesof TheGreat Lakes Entomologistare available at $1.75 each, with a 20 per cent discount for 25 or more copies sent to a single address. MICROFILM EDITION: Positive microfilm copies of the current volume of The Great Lakes Entomologist will be available at nominal cost, to members and bona fide subscribers of the paper edition only, at the end of each volume year. Please address all orders and inquiries to University Microfilms, Inc., 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106, USA. Inquiries about back numbers, subscriptions and Society business should be directed to the Executive Secretary, Michigan Entomological Society, Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48823, USA. Manuscripts and related correspondence should be directed to the Editor (see inside back cover). Copyright O 1972, The Michigan Entomological Society THE GREAT LAKES ENTOMOLOGIST THE SINGING INSECTS OF MICHIGAN Richard D. ~lexander,' Ann E. pace1 and Daniel 0tte2 INTRODUCTION The so-called "singing" insects are all those that make loud, rhythmical noises. They include members of three groups of Orthoptera (Gryllidae, Tettigoniidae, and Acridoidea) and one family of Homoptera (Cicadidae). There are about 300 noisy species in these four goups in eastern North America, perhaps a thousand in all of North America, and 25-30 thousand in the entire world. Only about 1000 of the world species have been studied in any detail, mostly in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Michigan has 90 known species of singing insects, representing all four of the above groups and a variety of subfamilies and genera. Recently, the Michigan species in each of these groups have been listed, and maps of their distributions and dates indicating adult seasonality have been presented (Moore, 1966; Cantrall, 1968). Except for morphological notes by Moore on the ten Michigan species of cicadas, however, no keys or other adequate means of distinguishing the species have been available. In this paper we add three orthopterans to Cantrall's list, and we provide keys, illustrations, and other informa- tion that we hope will enable interested persons to identify any singing insects from Michigan, either from a specimen that has date and locality data, or from a song and a field observation. Brief seasonal, distributional, and other biological information is also provided. The bibliography at the end of the paper includes all recent papers and phono- graph records dealing with Michigan singing insects. Because no keys to the sounds and associated behavior of locusts (Acrididae) are included in the present paper, discussions of these characteristics by Cantrall (1943, 1968) and Otte (1971) will be especially useful. The common names used for these four groups have been almost unbelievably con- fused between Europe and North America. The word "cricket" is used for all Gryllidae, but it has also been used for another family, the Gryllacrididae (including Stenopel- matinae and Rhaphidophorinae), along with various qualifying adjectives such as "camel cricket," "cave cricket," "stone cricket," and "Jerusalem cricket." "Weta" is the common name used for Gryllacrididae in New Zealand, but there appears to be no universal common name among English-speaking people for members of this family. Both '"grass- hopper" and "locust" have been used for both Acrididae and Tettigoniidae. "Locust" and "harvest-locust" are commonly used for cicadas in North America, reputedly because early settlers likened their sudden emergences to Old World locust plagues. Another common name for cicadas, especially in the South, is "jarfly." Sometime during the 18th or 19th century in North America, the name "katydid" was derived for Pterophylla cameZZifolia because its call can easily be paraphrased "katy-did." The name has been expanded by American entomologists to include most or all subfamilies of Tettigoniidae, and various adjectives have been applied such as "true katydids" (Pseudophyllinae), "false katydids," (Phaneropterinae), and "shield-backed katydids" (Decticinae). Some North American Tettigoniidae have been commonly referred to as "long-horned grasshoppers," with the Conocephalinae becoming "meadow grasshoppers," the Copiphorinae becoming "coneheaded grasshoppers," etc. But this requires that the Acrididae be referred to specifically as "short-horned gfasshoppers" (or locusts). In fact, Britishers refer to members of the Acridinae as "meadow grasshoppers" while we call members of the same genera "locusts," and a recent book on British Orthoptera refers to all Tettigoniidae as "bush crickets"! It seems impossible to straighten out this colloquial nomenclature to everybody's satisfaction, but for simplicity in this paper we use the names "locust" and "grasshopper" only for Acrididae, "cicada" for Cicadidae, "cricket" for Gryllidae, and "katydid" for Tettigoniidae. '~useum of Zoology and Department of Zoology, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104 2~urrentaddress: Department of Zoology, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712 34 THE GREAT LAKES ENTOMOLOGIST Vol. 5, No. 2 In all known cases, the males of these groups are the predominant or the sole noise- makers, and most of the sounds-even such embellishments as aggressive, territorial, or male aggregation sounds-function in connection with pair formation, courtship, mating. Disturbance squawks, prevalent in cicadas, unusual in katydids, and virtu-) absent in crickets and locusts, may be secondary phenomena in all of the groups in which they are found. They are produced when the insect is startled or manh~ndled and probably function in connection with escape from predators, though this has not been proved in any natural situation. As a consequence of the role of acoustical signalling in mating, a,~dtherefore in- directly in reproductive isolation among species, it is not surprising that, on a local basis, acoustical behavior has turned out to be essentially infallible in species recognition. In other words, no case has yet been discovered in which two species that are reproductively active in the same places at the same times have identical acoustical behavior. Sometimes the calling songs of two species are distinct and non-overlapping when analyzed by audiospectrograph or oscilloscope, but their differences are not distinguishable to the unaided human ear. In a few instances, closely related species that are temporally isolated (Gryllus veletis and G. pennsylvanicus here), ecologically isolated on different host plants (Oecanthus quadripunctatus and 0. pini and 0. laricis here), or geographically isolated (0. pini and 0. laricis here or G. firmus on the Atlantic Coast and G. bermudensis on Bermuda) still have very similar or apparently identical acoustical behavior. Crickets and katydids make their noises by rubbing the forewings together and hear with tympanal auditory organs located on the'-front legs (Figs. 10-14, 24-31, 3740, 48). Band-winged locusts (Oedipodinae) make their noises by rubbing their hind legs against the forewings and by snapping