ML141209
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Subject 1: (Interview). Subtitle: Ronald R. Hoy. Timecode In: 00:04:07. Timecode out: 00:34:55. Notes: Parasitoid tachinid flies and crickets. Subject 2: (Interview). Subtitle: Ron Miles. Timecode In: 00:38:11. Timecode out: 01:08:43. Notes: Mechanisms of hearing organ of parasitoid tachinid flies. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Split track; Neumann KMR 81. NPR/NGS RADIO EXPEDITIONS Show: Fly¿s Ear Log of DAT #: 1 Date: ng = not good ok = okay g = good vg = very good 00:38 sound begins AC 4:07 Ron, just say who you are and who you are in relation to this story. What do you do in the story of the fly¿s ear? RH 4:15 Okay. My name is Ron Hoy. I¿m a professor in the section of neurobiology and behavior here at Cornell. My professional specialty is bioacoustics and I¿ve been studying insect sounds and how they hear for over 25 years and one of the most interesting stories that I¿ve been lucky enough to come upon is the story of the cricket and the fly. AC 4:42 It almost sounds like a parable, the cricket and the fly. Tell me, from the fly¿s perspective, what is the problem that it¿s got to solve in its relation to the cricket. RH 4:57 Okay, well, this is a very, this is an unusual, this is an unusual fly in the sense that it¿s a parasitic fly, and as I think many people know about parasites, there¿s a strong linkage between a parasite and its host. That is, there¿s, any given parasite has to find a specific host in which it either goes after or raises its young. In this case of this particular fly, which is called ormea ocracia?, which I¿ll refer to as the ormea fly, and which inhabits the southern parts of the United States but has in fact gone cross the waters. It¿s now found in Hawaii as well. This fly must find a particular kind of cricket in which to raise its young and so the problem for any parasite is to find its host and many parasites use their eyes, so there¿s visual spotting of the host, others smell out their hosts, they sniff them out, but if you¿re a fly having to find a cricket, perhaps the most obvious and conspicuous signal that a cricket gives off is its song. Now a cricket sings, not for the benefit of a fly, but a cricket sings. And by the way, only male crickets sing. A cricket sings in order to attract females for mating. And what the fly has done is break in on this communication system, so this means that the fly has to, in order to find a cricket by song, it has to hear. Now for flies, this becomes a particular problem, because while some flies do produce sounds and can hear these sounds, it is the case that just about all flies that have been documented to have sounds are in the low range. They¿re sort of low down in the sort of the humming range, in the hundreds of cycles per second, sort of like, little bit higher than radio, than a¿.cut. (7:11- laughing, joking). 7:24- The problem for flies is that very few have been known to hear the high frequencies that you find in a cricket¿s song. In fact, no fly that we¿d ever heard of at all. It¿s just not known. So it turns out that what this fly is done, presumably, is had to invent, in an evolutionary sense, a cricket-like ear. AC 7:51 In order to find these crickets that are singing. RH 7:55 Exactly. In order to find the cricket. And so it had to solve an evolutionary problem, because while we know about, while we know about, about fly sounds, for example, a mosquito, everybody knows about the ¿bzzzzzzzzzz¿ of a mosquito. It turns out that those frequencies are only about 400 or 600 hertz. So they¿re little frequencies, whereas a cricket¿s song is about 5000 hertz. So it¿s 10 times higher. It requires a different kind of ear. And the kind of ear that an insect needs to hear a cricket song is not associated with any known fly. AC 8:33 Well, how is it that this fly did it? RH 8:42 This... (Notes truncated)
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- Cataloged
- 24 Aug 2009 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 24 Aug 2009 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 24 Aug 2009 - Ben Brotman