ML141255
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Thomas K Wood. Timecode In: 00:01:49. Timecode out: 00:28:19. Notes: Rex Cocroft; Treehoppers. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Dual-Channel Mono. NPR/NGS RADIO EXPEDITIONS Show: Bug Communication Log of DAT #:2 Date: 1999 ng = not good ok= okay g = good vg = very good Absolute Time INTERVIEW WITH TOM WOOD 0.00.00 -0.01.48 recorded silence 0.01.48 -0.02.18 AC: Hello? TKW: Hello. AC: Hi, Tom Wood? TKW: Yes. AC: Hi. It's Alex Chadwick. TKW: Right. AC: We're calling because we're doing a piece about the work of Rex Cocroft, TKW: right, AC: And I think Andrea Seabrook had talked to you about our interest in insect communication, and treehoppers, and ... You're quite a treehopper man yourself, I guess. 0.02.18 -0.05.04 TKW: Well, that's all I work with .. AC: You're sited repeatedly in Rex's papers. TKW: Yeah, I work with Umbonia crassicomis the species that Rex has done a lot of work with. I guess what the piece is all about. In the early 70s, and so I do know the critter very well. I am not an expert, I can tell you on vibrational communication, but I do know something about treehoppers, yeah AC: Well, we're interested in both. TKW: Well, I can, let's see, exactly what do you want to know. I think this is a fascinating piece of work, in a lot of ways, the history of vibrational communication actually, in terms of, to put it in a little bit broader context, in the group of insects that Rex is working with, which are membracids, but they're all part of a larger group of homoptera insects that people would know as cicadas and leafhoppers and this sort of thing ... And there was a paper published in 1949 by a Swede, called insect rumors, and it was the first time where, well maybe it's not the first time, anyway he did a lot of work with morphology and this sort of thing, looking for sound producing structures in cicadas and leafhoppers and another group we call Pholgamorpha now. And there was a hint that treehoppers might actually make songs, but there was no definitive data, until actually Rex Cocroft and Randy Hunt at Eastern Indiana University both about the same time, found these courtship signals, and treehoppers in general in a number of different species. AC: Let me ask you to pause just a second here, would it be okay for us to record some of this for possible use in a TKW: Oh, of course!. .. 0.05.04 -0.05.36 AC: So, let me go ahead TKW: Just so I don't sound too potty in the head. AC: No, you don't sound too potty in the head, I think you sound fine. Tell me, how should we identify you? TKW: Tom Wood, AC: Professor of, Doctor of, TKW: Oh, I'm a professor yeah, us, professor of Entomology, ... just professor is fine. At the University of Delaware. That would get me in big trouble if we used Delaware State. 0.05.36 -0.08.43 AC: You said that this is fascinating work, and it's fascinating to me, as a layman, just to know that these sounds are there, but why is it fascinating to a scientist? TKW: Well, how to do this, quickly, I'm not sure. I worked in the 1970s with Umbonium, and up until about that time, there had been several, well actually there was a paper that was published in 1894 by a woman who was I think it was in Missouri or in Kansas, she was an invalid in a wheelchair, and she published a little paper about, I can't remember exactly the title at this point, about maternal care in treehoppers, and then there was another woman that worked on some things, in British Guiana and she noticed some, she never called it parental care, but I guess maybe she did, but the point is that there were some earlier records early on that maternal care might actually be occurring in this family of insects. But there was a fellow that, his name was Funkhauser, and he was the treehopper authority, and he poo-pooed the whole idea, and then back in the, somehow I j... (Notes truncated)
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- 6 Oct 2009 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 6 Oct 2009 - Ben Brotman
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- 6 Oct 2009 - Ben Brotman