FOWLER, E.*; HILL, P.S.M.: Individual Identification of the Prairie Mole Cricket, Gryllotalpa major.

Gryllotalpa major, the prairie mole cricket, is a rare species native to the Oklahoma grasslands. Little is known about this particular species, and information is difficult to obtain because of its subterranean lifestyle. Of particular concern is our not being able to mark individuals in a population to track movements or gauge individual mating success. This study was designed to distinguish individual males based solely on their airborne sexual advertisement calls. The males dwell within their own burrow systems in the ground and project their calls through a surface opening of an acoustic horn to attract females for mating. Cassette tape recordings were collected from targeted burrows during the calling season and coverted to digitized sound files using SIGNAL software. These files were then subjected to correlational analyses to determine if we could distinguish “same” from “different” with a high level of accuracy and repeatability. Athough other studies of insect sounds in this context have not been reported, recent success in identifying individual canaries, bats, wolves, etc. encouraged us to pursue this work. With the certainty of identification based on the call, new doors can be opened to the study of this and related species. Not only will male spacing and burrow establishment be open to new interpretation, but parameters of the calls of successful males can be examined to tease out the focus of female choice for the species.