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Q&A ViewAttendees 5

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

10-Minute Paper

SysEB: Evolution

A narrow escape: Have crickets evolved a temporal escape strategy to avoid parasitism?

Tuesday, November 2, 2021
9:00 AM – 9:12 AM MT
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Room 102-106
In-Person

    Presenting Author(s)

  • MW

    Mary L. Westwood

    PhD Student
    University of Edinburgh
    Edinburgh, UK, Scotland, United Kingdom

    • Co-Author(s)

  • Quentin Geissmann

    Postdoctoral fellow
    University of British Columbia
    Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

  • AO

    Aidan O'Donnell

    University of Edinburgh
    Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

  • JR

    Jack Rayner

    University of St. Andrews
    St. Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom

  • WS

    Will Schneider

    Bangor University
    Bangor, Wales, United Kingdom

  • MZ

    Marlene Zuk

    University of Minnesota
    Saint Paul, Minnesota

  • NB

    Nathan Bailey

    University of St. Andrews
    St. Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom

  • SR

    Sarah Reece

    University of Edinburgh
    Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Biological rhythms provide organisms with an elegant solution to organising daily activities with the environment. For the Pacific field cricket (Teleogryllus oceanicus), this includes timing reproductive behaviours to maximise mate encounter while simultaneously minimising the risk of predation and parasitism. Hawaiian populations of T. oceanicus are subject to the deadly, acoustically-orienting parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea. Using both audio and visual cues, the fly homes in on its host and deposits larvae which ultimately consume and kill it. One solution the cricket has evolved to evade the fly is a silent male morph (flatwing) incapable of producing sound. Flatwings benefit from the presence of singing males (typical males) by pursuing satellite mating strategies. However, observations suggest that typical males have evolved a suite of strategies to evade infection. We hypothesise that instead of singing from dusk until dawn, typical males restrict singing to the darkest part of the night – a temporal escape strategy. Here we integrate chronobiology with behavioural ecology to compare singing rhythms in parasitised and unparasitized populations of typical males. We introduce a pipeline for using continuous audio data for circadian analysis, and provide novel insight into the role of circadian rhythms in host-parasite interactions and sexual selection.