Close range sound communications of the oak platypodid beetle Platypus quercivorus (Murayama) (Coleoptera: Platypodidae).

Abstract

The oak platypodid beetle, Platypus quercivorus, stridulates both during premating behavior and when stressed, as well as spontaneously. When a female was put onto the bark surface of a male-infested log, she began to walk and produce an “approaching chirp, ” searching for a gallery entrance. When finding one, she entered it and tried to pull a male out. If the male's abdomen became visible, she appeared to push her frons against his elytral declivity and made a “premating buzz” that lasted about 5–10 s. During this buzzing, the male backed out of the gallery in order to allow her in. Females that had been silenced via surgery did not evoke this reaction; thus, males apparently identified females by their buzzing sound. The male then followed the female into the gallery, and produced an “in-gallery chirp” with his posterior abdomen visible. After a while, both sexes backed out of the hole and copulated at the entrance. Both sexes produced “stress chirps” when confined inside a cotton ball, and “spontaneous chirps” when walking alone on the surface of an oak bark piece.