Crickets in Hawaii Go Silent

Flatwing cricket )Teleogryllus oceanicus)

Some people might not like the chirping sound that crickets make. I love it (except in the middle of the night from under the bed). 

In Hawaii, happy chirping crickets (trying to attract mates) attracted parasitic, burrowing flies (Ormia ochracea) that preyed on them by listening for their sounds. 

University of Minnesota biologist, Marlene Zuk, Ph.D. has studied crickets in Kauai since 1991. Every year that she traveled to the islands offered fewer and fewer cricket calls until there was silence in 2003. 

It turns out the crickets hadn't disappeared, but simply evolved into stealth mode to survive the predatory flies. Original males that rubbed their wings together like a file on comb teeth to attract females were targeted by the flies, but new and improved males with newly mutated wings (without the file/teeth structures) were safe. The silent crickets flourished "under the radar" of the burrowing flies and grew in numbers.

The same thing happened on the island of Oahu roughly 3 years later in a case of independent evolutionary convergence. (Mother Nature catches on when she has a good thing!)

It looks like the strong, silent type of male is attractive in the cricket world, too.
Go science!