Assistant Professor University of Massachusetts Lowell, Massachusetts
Ant crickets (Myrmecophilidae) are the only obligate parasites in the order Orthoptera. They live exclusively inside the nests of ants, where they pilfer stored food and brood, and solicit regurgitated liquid from their hosts. Many ant crickets are host-generalists that exploit ant species from several size classes and subfamilies. Crickets in the Myrmecophilus manni species complex parasitize more than 41 ant species in the western United States, and vary enormously in body-size depending on the identity of their ant hosts. When reared with small-bodied ants, M. manni grows into small adults, but when reared with large-bodied ants, M. manni grow into a large adults. The positive correlation between host size and cricket size is clear, but any function of host size-matching, if one exists, has remained elusive. Using a combination of morphological data, and cross-fostering experiments, I asked the following: 1) Is cricket body size an epiphenomenon of colony nutrition? 2) Do ant crickets evade detection by mimicking the gasters of host ants? 3) Does a positive correlation between cricket size and host size exist so that females can lay mimetic eggs? 4) Can body-size plasticity be induced in host-specialist ant crickets? The unsual biology of various Myrmecophilidae will also be discussed.
