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Why Crickets Just Won't Shut Up | Deep Look

user45
14 vistas · 6 años hace

Male crickets play tunes non-stop to woo a mate or keep enemies away. But they're not playing their song with the body part you're thinking.

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DEEP LOOK is a ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.

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Ask most people about crickets and you’ll probably hear that they’re all pretty much the same: just little insects that jump and chirp.

But there are actually dozens of different species of field crickets in the U.S. And because they look so similar, the most common way scientists tell them apart is by the sounds they make.

“When I hear an evening chorus, all I hear are the different species,” said David Weissman, a research associate in entomology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Weissman has spent the last 45 years working to identify all the species of field crickets west of the Mississippi River. In December, he published his findings in the journal Zootaxa, identifying 35 species of field crickets in the western states, including 17 new species. California alone hosts 12 species. But many closely resemble the others. So even for one of the nation’s top experts, telling them apart isn’t a simple task.

“It turns out song is a good way to differentiate,” Weissman said.

--- How do crickets chirp?

On the underside of male crickets’ wings there’s a vein that sticks up covered in tiny microscopic teeth, all in a row. It’s called the file. There's a hard edge on the lower wing called the scraper.

When he rubs his wings together - the scraper on the bottom wing grates across all those little teeth on the top wing. It’s like running your thumb down the teeth of a comb. This process of making sound is called stridulation.

--- How do crickets hear?
Crickets have tiny ears, called tympana on each of their two front legs. They use them to listen for danger and to hear each other calling.

--- Why do crickets chirp?
Crickets have several different types of songs that serve different purposes. The familiar repetitive chirping song is a mating call that male crickets produce to attract females that search for potential mates.

If a female makes physical contact with a male he will typically switch to a second higher-pitched, quieter courtship song.

If instead a male cricket comes in contact with another adult male he will let out an angry-sounding rivalry call to tell his competitor to back off.

---+ Read the entire article on KQED Science:

https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2....020/01/14/crickets-c

---+ For more information:

Professor Fernando Montealegre-Z’s bioacoustics lab
http://bioacousticssensorybiology.weebly.com/

David Weissman’s article cataloging field crickets in the U.S.
https://www.biotaxa.org/Zootax....a/article/view/zoota

---+ Shoutout!

?Congratulations ?to the following fans on our YouTube community tab for correctly identifying the name and function of the kidney bean-shaped structure on the cricket’s tibia - the tympanum, or tympanal organ:

sjhall2009
Damian Porter
LittleDreamerRem
Red Segui
Ba Ri

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---+ About KQED

KQED, an NPR and PBS affiliate in San Francisco, CA, serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, Radio and web media.

Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios. Deep Look is a project of KQED Science, which is also supported by the National Science Foundation, the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation, the Vadasz Family Foundation, the Fuhs Family Foundation, Campaign 21 and the members of KQED.

These Fighting Fruit Flies Are Superheroes of Brain Science | Deep Look

user45
14 vistas · 6 años hace

Thanks to The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this episode of Deep Look. Try a 30 day trial of The Great Course Plus at http://ow.ly/7QYH309wSOL. If you liked this episode, you might be interested in their course “Major Transitions in Evolution”.

POW! BAM! Fruit flies battling like martial arts masters are helping scientists map brain circuits. This research could shed light on human aggression and depression.

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Neuroscientist Eric Hoopfer likes to watch animals fight. But these aren’t the kind of fights that could get him arrested – no roosters or pit bulls are involved.

Hoopfer watches fruit flies.

The tiny insects are the size of a pinhead, with big red eyes and iridescent wings. You’ve probably only seen them flying around an overripe piece of fruit.

At the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, Hoopfer places pairs of male fruit flies in tiny glass chambers. When they start fighting, they look like martial arts practitioners: They stand face to face and tip each other over; they lunge, roll around and even toss each other, sumo-wrestler style.

But this isn’t about entertainment. Hoopfer is trying to understand how the brain works.

When the aggressive fruit flies at Caltech fight, Hoopfer and his colleagues monitor what parts of their brains the flies are using. The researchers can see clusters of neurons lighting up. In the future, they hope this can help our understanding of conditions that tap into human emotional states, like depression or addiction.

“Flies when they fight, they fight at different intensities. And once they start fighting they continue fighting for a while; this state persists. These are all things that are similar to (human) emotional states,” said Hoopfer. “For example, there’s this scale of emotions where you can be a little bit annoyed and that can scale up to being very angry. If somebody cuts you off in traffic you might get angry and that lasts for a little while. So your emotion lasts longer than the initial stimulus.”

Circuits in our brains that make us stay mad, for example, could hold the key to developing better treatments for mental illness.

“All these neuro-psychiatric disorders, like depression, addiction, schizophrenia, the drugs that we have to treat them, we don’t really understand exactly how they are acting at the level of circuits in the brain,” said Hoopfer. “They help in some cases the symptoms that you want to treat. But they also cause a lot of side effects. So what we’d ideally like are drugs that can act on the specific neurons and circuits in the brain that are responsible for depression and for the symptoms of depression that we want to treat, and not ones that control other things.”

--- What do fruit flies eat?
In the lab, researchers feed fruit flies yeast and apple juice.

--- How do I get rid of fruit flies in my house?
Fruit flies are attracted to ripe fruit and vegetables.

---+ Read the entire article on KQED Science:
https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2....017/03/28/these-figh

---+ For more information:

The David Anderson Lab at Caltech:
https://davidandersonlab.caltech.edu/
---+ More Great Deep Look episodes:

How Mosquitoes Use Six Needles to Suck Your Blood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD8SmacBUcU
Meet the Dust Mites, Tiny Roommates That Feast On Your Skin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACrLMtPyRM0

---+ See some great videos and documentaries from the PBS Digital Studios!

It’s Okay To Be Smart: Why Your Brain Is In Your Head
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdNE4WygyAk
BrainCraft: Can You Solve This Dilemma?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xHKxrc0PHg

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---+ About KQED

KQED, an NPR and PBS affiliate in San Francisco, California, serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, radio and web media.

Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Deep Look is a project of KQED Science, which is also supported by HopeLab, the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation, the Vadasz Family Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Smart Family Foundation and the members of KQED.
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