Behavior Of Crickets Research Articles

Independent operations of appetitive and aversive conditioning systems lead to simultaneous production of conflicting memories in an insect.

Pavlovian conditioning is a ubiquitous form of associative learning that enables animals to remember appetitive and aversive experiences. Animals possess appetitive and aversive conditioning systems that memorize and retrieve appetitive and aversive experiences. Here, we addressed a question of whether integration of competing appetitive and aversive information takes place during the encoding of the experience or during memory retrieval. We developed novel experimental procedures to address this question using crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus), which allowed selective blockade of the expression of appetitive and aversive memories by injecting octopamine and dopamine receptor antagonists. We conditioned an odour (conditioned stimulus 1, CS1) with water and then with sodium chloride solution. At 24 h after conditioning, crickets retained both appetitive and aversive memories, and the memories were integrated to produce a conditioned response (CR). Importantly, when a visual pattern (CS2) was conditioned with CS1, appetitive and aversive memories formed simultaneously. This indicates that appetitive and aversive second-order conditionings are achieved at the same time. The memories were integrated for producing a conditioned response. We conclude that appetitive and aversive conditioning systems operate independently to form parallel appetitive and aversive memories, which compete to produce learned behaviour in crickets.

DeepLabCut-based daily behavioural and posture analysis in a cricket.

Circadian rhythms are indispensable intrinsic programs that regulate the daily rhythmicity of physiological processes, such as feeding and sleep. The cricket has been employed as a model organism for understanding the neural mechanisms underlying circadian rhythms in insects. However, previous studies measuring rhythm-controlled behaviours only analysed locomotive activity using seesaw-type and infrared sensor-based actometers. Meanwhile, advances in deep learning techniques have made it possible to analyse animal behaviour and posture using software that is devoid of human bias and does not require physical tagging of individual animals. Here, we present a system that can simultaneously quantify multiple behaviours in individual crickets - such as locomotor activity, feeding, and sleep-like states - in the long-term, using DeepLabCut, a supervised machine learning-based software for body keypoints labelling. Our system successfully labelled the six body parts of a single cricket with a high level of confidence and produced reliable data showing the diurnal rhythms of multiple behaviours. Our system also enabled the estimation of sleep-like states by focusing on posture, instead of immobility time, which is a conventional parameter. We anticipate that this system will provide an opportunity for simultaneous and automatic prediction of cricket behaviour and posture, facilitating the study of circadian rhythms.

When night becomes day: Artificial light at night alters insect behavior under semi-natural conditions

Light is the most important Zeitgeber for temporal synchronization in nature. Artificial light at night (ALAN) disrupts the natural light-dark rhythmicity and thus negatively affects animal behavior. However, to date, ALAN research has been mostly conducted under laboratory conditions in this context. Here, we used the field cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus, to investigate the effect of ALAN on insect behavior under semi-natural conditions, i.e., under shaded natural lighting conditions, natural temperature and soundscape. Male crickets were placed individually in outdoor enclosures and exposed to ALAN conditions ranging from <0.01 to 1500 lx intensity. The crickets' stridulation behavior was recorded for 14 consecutive days and nights and their daily activity patterns were analysed. ALAN impaired the crickets' stridulation rhythm, evoking a change in the crickets' naturally synchronized daily activity period. This was manifested by a light-intensity-dependent increase in the proportion of insects demonstrating an intrinsic circadian rhythm (free-run behavior). This also resulted in a change in the population's median activity cycle period. These ALAN-induced effects occurred despite the crickets' exposure to almost natural conditions. Our findings provide further validity to our previous studies on ALAN conducted under lab conditions and establish the deleterious impacts of ALAN on animal behavioral patterns. TeaserArtificial light at night alters cricket behavior and desynchronizes their stridulation even under near-natural conditions.

Crickets in the spotlight: exploring the impact of light on circadian behavior.

Crickets serve as a well-established model organism in biological research spanning various fields, such as behavior, physiology, neurobiology, and ecology. Cricket circadian behavior was first reported over a century ago and prompted a wealth of studies delving into their chronobiology. Circadian rhythms have been described in relation to fundamental cricket behaviors, encompassing stridulation and locomotion, but also in hormonal secretion and gene expression. Here we review how changes in illumination patterns and light intensity differentially impact the different cricket behaviors as well as circadian gene expression. We further describe the cricket's circadian pacemaker. Ample anatomical manipulations support the location of a major circadian pacemaker in the cricket optic lobes and another in the central brain, possibly interconnected via signaling of the neuropeptide PDF. The cricket circadian machinery comprises a molecular cascade based on two major transcriptional/translational negative feedback loops, deviating somewhat from the canonical model of Drosophila and emphasizing the significance of exploring alternative models. Finally, the nocturnal nature of crickets has provided a unique avenue for investigating the repercussions of artificial light at night on cricket behavior and ecology, underscoring the critical role played by natural light cycles in synchronizing cricket behaviors and populations, further supporting the use of the cricket model in the study of the effects of light on insects. Some gaps in our knowledge and challenges for future studies are discussed.

A convolutional neural network with image and numerical data to improve farming of edible crickets as a source of food-A decision support system.

Crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus) produce sounds as a natural means to communicate and convey various behaviors and activities, including mating, feeding, aggression, distress, and more. These vocalizations are intricately linked to prevailing environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. By accurately monitoring, identifying, and appropriately addressing these behaviors and activities, the farming and production of crickets can be enhanced. This research implemented a decision support system that leverages machine learning (ML) algorithms to decode and classify cricket songs, along with their associated key weather variables (temperature and humidity). Videos capturing cricket behavior and weather variables were recorded. From these videos, sound signals were extracted and classified such as calling, aggression, and courtship. Numerical and image features were extracted from the sound signals and combined with the weather variables. The extracted numerical features, i.e., Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), Linear Frequency Cepstral Coefficients, and chroma, were used to train shallow (support vector machine, k-nearest neighbors, and random forest (RF)) ML algorithms. While image features, i.e., spectrograms, were used to train different state-of-the-art deep ML models, i,e., convolutional neural network architectures (ResNet152V2, VGG16, and EfficientNetB4). In the deep ML category, ResNet152V2 had the best accuracy of 99.42%. The RF algorithm had the best accuracy of 95.63% in the shallow ML category when trained with a combination of MFCC+chroma and after feature selection. In descending order of importance, the top 6 ranked features in the RF algorithm were, namely humidity, temperature, C#, mfcc11, mfcc10, and D. From the selected features, it is notable that temperature and humidity are necessary for growth and metabolic activities in insects. Moreover, the songs produced by certain cricket species naturally align to musical tones such as C# and D as ranked by the algorithm. Using this knowledge, a decision support system was built to guide farmers about the optimal temperature and humidity ranges and interpret the songs (calling, aggression, and courtship) in relation to weather variables. With this information, farmers can put in place suitable measures such as temperature regulation, humidity control, addressing aggressors, and other relevant interventions to minimize or eliminate losses and enhance cricket production.

Motor state changes escape behavior of crickets

Animals change their behavior depending on external circumstances, internal factors, and their interactions. Locomotion state is a crucial internal factor that profoundly affects sensory perception and behavior. However, studying the behavioral impacts of locomotion state in free-moving animals has been challenging due to difficulty in reproducing quantitatively identical stimuli in freely moving animals. We utilized a closed-loop controlled servosphere treadmill system, enabling unrestricted confinement and orientation of small animals, and investigated wind-induced escape behavior in freely moving crickets. When stimulated during locomotion, the crickets quickly stopped before initiating escape behavior. Moving crickets exhibited a higher probability of escape response compared to stationary crickets. The threshold for pausing response in moving crickets was also much lower than the escape response threshold. Moving crickets had delayed reaction times for escape and greater variance in movement direction compared to stationary crickets. The locomotion-related response delay may be compensated by an elevated sensitivity to airflow.

Persistence of auditory modulation of wind-induced escape behavior in crickets.

Animals, including insects, change their innate escape behavior triggered by a specific threat stimulus depending on the environmental context to survive adaptively the predators' attack. This indicates that additional inputs from sensory organs of different modalities indicating surrounding conditions could affect the neuronal circuit responsible for the escape behavior. Field crickets, Gryllus bimaculatus, exhibit an oriented running or jumping escape in response to short air puff detected by the abdominal mechanosensory organ called cerci. Crickets also receive a high-frequency acoustic stimulus by their tympanal organs on their frontal legs, which suggests approaching bats as a predator. We have reported that the crickets modulate their wind-elicited escape running in the moving direction when they are exposed to an acoustic stimulus preceded by the air puff. However, it remains unclear how long the effects of auditory inputs indicating surrounding contexts last after the sound is terminated. In this study, we applied a short pulse (200ms) of 15-kHz pure tone to the crickets in various intervals before the air-puff stimulus. The sound given 200 or 1000ms before the air puff biased the wind-elicited escape running backward, like the previous studies using the longer and overlapped sound. But the sounds that started 2000ms before and simultaneously with the air puff had little effect. In addition, the jumping probability was higher only when the delay of air puff to the sound was 1000ms. These results suggest that the cricket could retain the auditory memory for at least one second and alter the motion choice and direction of the wind-elicited escape behavior.

Construction and evaluation of an AI system for tracking cricket behavior under conditions of bright and dark lighting

Since 2013, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations published a publication that embraced the opportunity to use insect for food and feed, to raise the profile of insects and further promoting diversity of diet, sustainable practices, and food security, insect production has attracted attention as a potential food source, and advanced methods have been developed. Among insects, crickets are of particular interest because they are omnivorous and easy to mass produce. Ultimately, we aim to build a system in Japan that can mass-produce crickets using food waste. For this purpose, a cricket feeding system that utilises food loss is needed to support the development and commercialisation of new insect foods along with renewable energy and smart production methods to reduce labour requirements. To improve productivity and develop smart production, we should understand the ecology of crickets (focusing on their behaviour in terms of diet and water consumption) with the premise of mass production. However, relatively few studies have considered these factors in detail. We consider that this information could enable considerable improvement in the productivity of cricket production systems. Therefore, in this study, we constructed an Artificial Intelligent system designed to capture ecological information on crickets using a You Only Look Once version 5 model for mass production. The proposed system is relatively inexpensive, has high recognition accuracy and real-time performance, can be configured for different lighting conditions, and can recognise crickets even under dark conditions. The results show that this system can be implemented on prototype smart cricket farms and can be integrated with mass production systems. It is robust to bright and dark conditions with high accuracy and real-time framerates, with mAP values of 0.903 and 0.921 and framerates of 20.20 and 20.96 frames, respectively.

The acoustic behaviour of male Isophya camptoxypha bush crickets (Orthoptera: Tettigonioidea) in the Uzh river valley: preliminary findings.

The research article presents a study of acoustic behaviour of the bush cricket Isophya camptoxypha from Ukrainian Carpathians. However, it has also been discovered in forest meadows located in the Uzh River valley, which is part of the Danube catchment basin. The article discusses the unique stridulations of this species in vivo and in natural settings, as well as the acoustic interactions between male bush-crickets during duet singing. This study provides valuable insights into the intricate acoustic behaviour of Isophya camptoxypha.

Effect of a Nitric Oxide Synthase Inhibitor on Fighting Behavior of Male Crickets Velarifictorus aspersus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) under Different Resource Conditions

Abstract The availability of resources can have important effects on the fighting behaviors of insects, but the physiological mechanism that might underlie the effect of resources is unclear. Nitric oxide (NO) is a gaseous neurotransmitter that is capable of directly diffusing into cells and acting as a messenger. Several studies have reported that NO may be involved in modulating the fighting behavior of insects. In the present study, we investigated the effect of different resources on the fighting behavior of Velarifictorus aspersus Walker male crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae), and tested whether this effect is regulated by NO. We found that when a burrow or female was available, the fighting level and fighting duration were significantly greater in males compared with those when no resources were available, thereby suggesting that the presence of a valuable resource motivated male crickets to fight more aggressively. In a novel environment, treatment with an NO synthase inhibitor NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) significantly increased the fighting level and fighting duration in male crickets, and males treated with L-NAME won more fights against males treated with water. However, when a burrow or female was available, treatment with L-NAME did not affect the fighting level and fighting duration in males, and males treated with L-NAME lost more fights against males treated with water. These results suggest that NO may have different effects on modulating the fighting behavior of male V. aspersus crickets under different resource conditions.

Roles of neural communication between the brain and thoracic ganglia in the selection and regulation of the cricket escape behavior

To survive a predator’s attack, prey animals must exhibit escape responses that are appropriately regulated in terms of their moving speed, distance, and direction. Insect locomotion is considered to be controlled by an interaction between the brain, which is involved in behavioral decision-making, and the thoracic ganglia (TG), which are primary motor centers. However, it remains unknown which descending and ascending signals between these neural centers are involved in the regulation of the escape behavior. We addressed the distinct roles of the brain and TG in the wind-elicited escape behavior of crickets by assessing the effects of partial ablation of the intersegmental communications on escape responses. We unilaterally cut the ventral nerve cord (VNC) at different locations, between the brain and TG, or between the TG and terminal abdominal ganglion (TAG), a primary sensory center of the cercal system. The partial ablation of ascending signals to the brain greatly reduced the jumping response rather than running, indicating that sensory information processing in the brain is essential for the choice of escape responses. The ablation of descending signals from the brain to the TG impaired locomotor performance and directional control of the escape responses, suggesting that locomotion in the escape behavior largely depends on the descending signals from the brain. Finally, the extracellular recording from the cervical VNC indicated a difference in the descending activities preceding the escape responses between running and jumping. Our results demonstrated that the brain sends the descending signals encoding the behavioral choice and locomotor regulation to the TG, while the TG seem to have other specific roles, such as in the preparation of escape movement.

Action selection based on multiple-stimulus aspects in wind-elicited escape behavior of crickets

Escape behavior is essential for animals to avoid attacks by predators. In some species, multiple escape responses could be employed. However, it remains unknown what aspects of threat stimuli affect the choice of an escape response. We focused on two distinct escape responses (running and jumping) to short airflow in crickets and examined the effects of multiple stimulus aspects including the angle, velocity, and duration on the choice between these responses. The faster and longer the airflow, the more frequently the crickets jumped. This meant that the choice of an escape response depends on both the velocity and duration of the stimulus and suggests that the neural basis for choosing an escape response includes the integration process of multiple stimulus parameters. In addition, the moving speed and distance changed depending on the stimulus velocity and duration for running but not for jumping. Running away would be more adaptive escape behavior.

Effects of Low-Level Artificial Light at Night on Kentucky Bluegrass and an Introduced Herbivore

Increasing evidence suggests that artificial light at night (ALAN) can negatively impact organisms. However, most studies examine the impacts of ALAN on a single species or under high levels of artificial light that are infrequent or unrealistic in urban environments. We currently have little information on how low levels of artificial light emanating from urban skyglow affect plants and their interactions with herbivores. We examined how short-term, low levels of ALAN affect grass and insects, including growth rate, photosynthesis, and stomatal conductance in grass, and foraging behavior and survival in crickets. We compared growth and leaf-level gas exchange of Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratensis) under low-levels of ALAN (0.3 lux) and starlight conditions (0.001 lux). Furthermore, each light treatment was divided into treatments with and without house crickets (Acheta domesticus). Without crickets present, bluegrass grown under ALAN for three weeks grew taller than plants grown under natural night light levels. In the fourth week when crickets were introduced, grass height decreased resulting in no measurable effects of light treatment. There were no measurable differences in grass physiology among treatments. Our results indicate that low levels of light resulting from skyglow affect plant growth initially. However, with herbivory, the effects of ALAN on grass may be inconsequential. Gaining an understanding of how ALAN affects plant-insect interactions is critical to predicting the ecological and evolutionary consequences of anthropogenic light pollution.

Agonistic experience during development establishes inter-individual differences in approach-avoidance behaviour of crickets

Members of numerous animal species show consistent inter-individual differences in behaviours, but the forces generating animal “personality” or individuality remain unclear. We show that experiences gathered solely from social conflict can establish consistent differences in the decision of male crickets to approach or avoid a stimulus directed at one antenna. Adults isolated for 48 h from a colony already exhibit behavioural differences. Prior to staging a single dyadic contest, prospective winners approached the stimulus whereas prospective losers turned away, as they did also after fighting. In contrast, adults raised as nymphs with adult males present but isolated from them as last instar nymphs, all showed avoidance. Furthermore, adults raised without prior adult contact, showed no preferred directional response. However, following a single fight, winners from both these groups showed approach and losers avoidance, but this difference lasted only one day. In contrast, after 6 successive wins or defeats, the different directional responses of multiple winners and losers remained consistent for at least 6 days. Correlation analysis revealed examples of consistent inter-individual differences in the direction and magnitude of turning responses, which also correlated with individual aggressiveness and motility. Together our data reveal that social subjugation, or lack thereof, during post-embryonic and early adult development forges individuality and supports the notion of a proactive–reactive syndrome in crickets.

Effect of a single cold stress exposure on the reproductive behavior of male crickets

Cold stress is an important abiotic factor that can impact insect physiology, behavior, and overall fitness. Upon exposure to cold temperature, many insects enter a reversible state of immobility called chill coma. If the cold stress is brief and mild enough, insects can recover and regain full mobility upon return to warmer temperatures. However, the long-term impact of sublethal cold stress on insect behavior has been understudied. Here, sexually naïve adult male Acheta domesticus crickets were exposed to a single 0 °C cold stress for 6 h. One week later, the ability of these males to mate with a female was examined. For mating trials, a cold stressed male cricket was paired with a non-cold stressed, control female. Control pairs were comprised of a non-cold stressed control male and control female. Cold exposed males were less successful at mating than control males because most did not carry a spermatophore at the time of their mating trials. However, when these cold stressed males were allowed 1 h of chemosensory contact with a female, most produced a spermatophore. Males that produced spermatophores were given the opportunity to mate once with a female, and stressed males that successfully mated sired as many offspring as did control males. However, our results support that a single cold stress exposure can negatively impact the reproductive fitness of male crickets since it reduced their capacity to carry spermatophores and, as a consequence, to attract females.

Manipulating monoamines reduces exploration and boldness of Mediterranean field crickets

Despite the prevalence and research interest of animal personality, its underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood. Due to the essential role of monoamines in modulating behaviour, we manipulated the monoaminergic systems of Mediterranean field crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus) to explore whether this altered behavioural responses commonly used to describe animal personality. Previous work has shown that both serotonin and dopamine manipulations can alter cricket behaviour, although results differ depending on the drug in focus. Here, we investigate the effect of Fluphenazine, a dopamine antagonist which also interacts with serotonin receptors, on activity, exploration, boldness, and aggression. These results are compared with those of our earlier work that investigated the effect of drugs that more specifically target serotonin or dopamine systems (Fluoxetine and Ropinirole, respectively). Due to limited research on dose-effects of Fluphenazine, we created dose-response curves with concentrations ranging from those measured in surface waters up to human therapeutic doses. We show that compared to control animals, Fluphenazine manipulation resulted in lower levels of both exploration and boldness, but did not affect activity nor aggression. The effect on explorative behaviour contradicts our previous results of serotonin and dopamine manipulations. These results together confirm the causal role of monoamines in explaining variation in behaviour often used to describe animal personality, effects that can be both dose- and behaviour-dependent. Further, our results suggest that previous results assigned specifically to the dopaminergic system, may at least partly be explained by effects of the serotonergic system. Thus, future studies should continue to investigate the explicit underlying roles of specific monoamines in explaining behavioural variation.

STUDI POLA INTERAKSI PERILAKU JANGKRIK (Gryllus bimaculatus ) JANTAN DAN BETINA

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The purpose of this study was to observe the behavior of male and female cricket (Gryllus bimaculatus) interactions. The objects of this study were five male crickets and one female cricket that had been isolated for twenty-four hours. This research is an exploratory descriptive study observing all male and female cricket (gryllus bimaculatus) behaviors. The research method used is ad libitum which is observing all visible activities, both social behavior and daily behavior of male and female crickets. Retrieval of data using direct observation, recording sounds and then recorded in the observation sheet, observation notes, and documentation tools. The data that has been collected is then analyzed using descriptive analysis techniques that describe the behaviors that arise during observation. The results showed that the behavior that is often performed by crickets is sounding, eating, climbing, mating and attacking other crickets. Crickets perform sounding behavior to attract the attention of female crickets, show their existence and to defend their territory and food sources. crickets also often climb, to escape from the container because crickets want to live freely. Crickets perform eating behavior to maintain life and will show aggressive behavior when fighting over food and when maintaining their partners. Female crickets will mating if captivated by male crickets.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Males and females differ in how their behaviour changes with age in wild crickets

Because females produce and lay eggs or nurture embryos, they are constrained in the timing of their investment in reproduction. Males may have more opportunity to concentrate reproductive investment earlier in life, mating with as many females as possible soon after becoming adult. This fundamental difference leads to the prediction that because males can bias allocation towards increased reproductive investment early in life, they will use up resources earlier in their lives and hence senesce faster than females. A first step towards testing this prediction is to determine whether there are between-sex differences in age-related changes in behaviour. To do this we recorded the behaviour of crickets, Gryllus campestris, in a natural population living in and around their burrows in a meadow in northern Spain. Following individuals of both sexes through their adult lives, we recorded a range of nonreproductive behaviours, including how often they moved in and out of their burrows, how long they spent at the entrance, how long they spent outside, how quickly they left a burrow after fleeing inside to escape predation and whether they fed. We found evidence for substantial age-related changes in two of the movement traits in males, but not in females. Males moved less often and spent less time outside their burrows as they aged, whereas females showed no age-related changes in either trait. Feeding was not affected by age in males, but females fed more often as they got older. Our findings are consistent with the prediction that males senesce faster than females; experiments in nature will be needed to determine whether this pattern arises from life history trade-offs between reproduction and other traits.

Pre-adult aggression and its long-term behavioural consequences in crickets.

Social experience, particularly aggression, is considered a major determinant of consistent inter-individual behavioural differences between animals of the same species and sex. We investigated the influence of pre-adult aggressive experience on future behaviour in male, last instar nymphs of the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus. We found that aggressive interactions between male nymphs are far less fierce than for adults in terms of duration and escalation. This appears to reflect immaturity of the sensory apparatus for releasing aggression, rather than the motor system controlling it. First, a comparison of the behavioural responses of nymphs and adults to mechanical antennal stimulation using freshly excised, untreated and hexane-washed antennae taken from nymphs and adults, indicate that nymphs neither respond to nor produce sex-specific cuticular semiochemicals important for releasing aggressive behaviour in adults. Second, treatment with the octopamine agonist chlordimeform could at least partially compensate for this deficit. In further contrast to adults, which become hyper-aggressive after victory, but submissive after defeat, such winner and loser effects are not apparent in nymphs. Aggressive competition between nymphs thus appears to have no consequence for future behaviour in crickets. Male nymphs are often attacked by adult males, but not by adult females. Furthermore, observations of nymphs raised in the presence, or absence of adult males, revealed that social subjugation by adult males leads to reduced aggressiveness and depressed exploratory behaviour when the nymphs become adult. We conclude that social subjugation by adults during pre-adult development of nymphs is a major determinant of consistent inter-individual behavioural differences in adult crickets.

Effects of Low-Level Artificial Light at Night on Interactions and Related Biology of the House Cricket (Acheta domesticus) and Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratensis)

Increasing evidence suggests that artificial light at night (ALAN) can negatively impact both plant and animal species. However, most studies examine the impacts of ALAN on a single species or under high levels of artificial light that are infrequent or unrealistic in urban environments. We currently have little information on how low levels of artificial light emanating from urban environments in the form of skyglow affect interactions between species. Here we examined the effects of low-level ALAN compared to starlight on the biology (i.e. physiology, behavior) and interactions between house crickets (Acheta domesticus) and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis). We measured how ALAN impacts gas exchange and growth of Kentucky bluegrass; survival, morphology, and behavior of house crickets; and herbivory of bluegrass by crickets. Crickets had little to no effect on plant growth under artificial light conditions at 0.3 lux, and light treatments did not influence measured cricket biology. ALAN treatments did lead to increased plant growth rate, with no change in photosynthesis. Our results indicate no negative influence of skyglow ALAN on plant-insect interactions; however, more research is needed to determine the damaging thresholds of ALAN that could affect biotic interactions.