

Video: What the katydid did next Video: What the katydid did next

Acoustic mimicry is the katydid’s unique talent (Image: David Marshall and Kathy Hill)

EVERYTHING was going to plan for the male cicada looking for love. High in his tree in the dry bush country of eastern Australia, he started his serenade. First he gave a bright chirruping prelude, then urr-chip, urr-chip, urr-chip. Right on cue came an answering click. Each time the cicada repeated his urr-chip, there was that click again. His luck was in: a female was signalling her interest. The cicada began to move slowly towards the source of the clicks, singing as he went. The closer he got, the louder the clicks, and soon he could make out a telltale trembling among the leaves. Sure of his target now, he made his final move.

Quick as a flash, a pair of long, green legs darted out and clasped him in a tight embrace. In another instant, a powerful pair of insect jaws clamped around his head. What had gone wrong? His song was perfect, the response exactly right and dead on cue. But the cicada had been deceived. Those come-hither clicks were not the love call of a female cicada but a con trick executed by a voracious predator in search of a meal.

When husband-and-wife cicada experts Dave Marshall and Kathy Hill of the University of Connecticut at Storrs first heard this insect duet they too were taken in. They study cicadas belonging to the Cicadettini tribe, a group in which males and females locate each other with a characteristic call-and-response routine. Recently they have focused their attention on Australia, …