Cones and Seeds: Listening in Context

I’m going to write a few posts this summer about crickets and katydids in context. I’ve written about individual species and certainly about range expansion, and I think it’s also very helpful to observe these insects as part of a habitat. What do they eat? Which other Orthopterans are in the habitat, and how are they similar? Do those other species use the same plants? Is there any similarity between their songs?

Let’s start with many people’s favorite katydid: the Sword-bearing Conehead.

First, you hear them.

 

Lisa Rainsong · Sword - Bearing Conehead

 

Then, you attempt to find one. This could take a while

If and when you’re successful, I invite you to photograph him, but don’t move along just yet. You may know his song and his general appearance, but there’s so much more to observe!

First, what does he do while he’s singing? You might assume he’ll just stay in one position with his cone upright, but…

 

 Sword-bearing Conehead (Neoconocephalus ensiger)

He can – and will – sing upside down and will parade up and down a stem without missing a single pulse of his ongoing song. I find this rather impressive.

Females as well as males will dine upside-down.

 

 

Try not to disturb them, though, because they’ll turn upside down and drop cone first into the grasses, never to be seen by you again.

And definitely admire the female's ovipositor. She’s the one that bears the sword!

 

Although the males sing almost tirelessly, both males and females spend a lot of time enthusiastically eating…seeds, seeds, and more seeds! 

 

  

It’s fortunate that they have six legs, because they have to hold on to their stems while extricating those seeds. It’s fairly straightforward when they climb up a substantial grass stem with a seed head at the top, and upside down looks so effortless for them.

 

With patience and good fortune, you may be able to maneuver to the opposite side of the stem and actually watch them eat.

And that mouth!

 

Coneheads in Context

While every conehead is quite splendid in itself, it also is part of a broader context. What about their habitat? Other Orthopteran neighbors? Who else is singing, and how can we separate the songs?

While studying Sword-bearing Coneheads (or any other singing insect), notice the habitat and what other singing insects might share it. In this case, the habitat is usually an open field or meadow with grasses and quite possibly a mix of forbs such as goldenrod and asters as well. Remember, the male will need a fairly substantial stem for his singing perch.

When looking for a Sword-bearing Conehead, I’ll often find meadow katydid nymphs and adults. Slender Meadow Katydids mature in later July, as do the Sword-bearers. Tiny Short-winged Meadow Katydid nymphs will also be searching for seeds. 

 

 

Why not see what you can learn about these neighbors? If they live in the same habitat, do they share similarities with the Sword-bearing Coneheads? 

Slender Meadow Katydids may not have a prominent cone, but they, too can also perch, eat, and sing upside down. Their slender, green bodies and long, brown wings create an impressive blend with the grasses in which they live. They, too, love seeds! 

Lisa Rainsong · Slender Meadow Katydid

                                    

Slender Meadow Katydid female (Conocephalus fasciatus)

 

In some areas, the habitat may be shared with Straight-lanced Meadow Katydids. Look at the female’s ovipositor – she’s carrying a substantial sword herself. And look at the little bump on this species’ head: it’s not quite a cone, but it looks like it could grow into one. These katydids live in grassy fields and are also seed-eaters.  

Lisa Rainsong · Straight - lanced Meadow Katydid

 

                                

Straight-lanced Meadow Katydid (Conocephalus strictus)

Male, above and female, below

 

Short-winged Meadow Katydids are also common in meadows, though they live in edge habitats as well. They're just as fond of seeds as the Slender and Straight-lanced Meadow Katydids and could certainly be found in the same vicinity as the Sword-bearing Coneheads. What I find especially charming about them is how boldly the nymphs climb all the way to the tops of big bluestem after dark so that they can reach the abundance of seeds far above the ground.

Lisa Rainsong · Short-winged Meadow Katydid

 

  Short-winged Meadow Katydid female (Conocephalus brevipennis)

 

There are two Orchelimum meadow katydids you may find as well: Gladiator Meadow Katydids in the early summer and Common Meadow Katydids a little later. They are a little larger and heftier than those in the Conocephalus genus, but they appear and sound more similar than different.

Gladiator Meadow Katydids live in a somewhat wider range of habitats, as they can be found both in grassy meadows and in wetland edges. They are just as enamored with seeds as the other katydids we've visited. 

Lisa Rainsong · Gladiator Meadow Katydid Bath Nature Preserve

 

 

 Gladiator Meadow Katydid (Orchelimum gladiator)

  

Common Meadow Katydids are a possibility as well, though they are not as widespread in NE Ohio as our Gladiators. Common Meadow Katydids can be found in fields and meadows, but not typically near wetlands.

Lisa Rainsong · Common Meadow Katydid Bigelow Cemetery

 

Common Meadow Katydid (Orchelimum vulgare)

 

It's a nice collection of seed enthusiasts, and any of them may be found singing and feasting with the Sword-bearing Coneheads.

And what is it about timothy, anyway? It’s a favorite among coneheads and meadow katydids, but they’re not the only ones. I see meadow and edge habitat tree crickets - including nymphs – on timothy. Beetles. Bugs. I've even seen slugs up on timothy seed heads! If we're looking at and listening to the overall Sword-bearer habitat, why not see who else is sharing the dining room?

 Narrow-winged Tree Cricket (Oecanthus niveus)

Let's focus next on the various meadow katydid songs and the Sword-bearing Conehead’s song. Listen: are there similarities? I imagine you'll find the meadow katydids to be challenging to tell apart. Their songs are typically long repetitions of tics and/or whirrs that are fairly high in frequency (as in pitch, not occurrence). Let's do a comparison and you can see (or hear) what you think.

The meadow katydids are quite similar and the Sword-bearing Coneheads seem to blend in nicely with their continuous, high-frequency songs. Why are such similar songs heard in the same habitat? What makes them suitable for meadows and fields? 

Lisa Rainsong · Cones and Seeds medley

    

The order of the singers is: Sword-bearing Conehead, Slender Meadow Katydid, 

Straight-lanced Meadow Katydid, Short-winged Meadow Katydid, Gladiator Meadow Katydid, Common Meadow Katydid, and a return to the Sword-bearing Conehead.

 

I'll compare these to some of the woodland and edge habitat katydids in the next post I write.

I’ll leave you with one more interesting fact about the Sword-bearing Coneheads. Although they are generally green in my area (NE Ohio), I have found a couple of brown forms as well. Some coneheads, such as the Round-tipped, seem to occur in equal numbers of green and brown forms, but a brown Sword-bearer is a rare treat in NE Ohio. The only two I have found in my area were at Bath Nature Preserve in Summit County. The first photo is a brown female with a rosy face. You'll see how the brown male in the second photo blends beautifully while hiding in the dried grasses.

Assisting with the second Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas taught me a great deal about watching and listening for behavior, relationships, and overall context. I approach singing insects in a similar way, and there are fascinating things to learn from any of them.

And what better place to start than coneheads and their seeds?

 

 

 

Has anyone seen me?

I’m looking for a katydids that I haven’t yet seen or heard in Ohio. Are they still here? 

These meadow katydid species are in the genus Orchelimum and I found them listed in the Singing Insects of North America web site: Dusky-faced Meadow Katydid, Nimble Meadow Katydid, Delicate Meadow Katydid, and Striped-faced Meadow Katydid. They've been recorded in northern Ohio in the past, and some have been quite common. So far, however, I can’t say that I’ve seen or heard any of them. There’s been so much habitat loss and general degradation - especially of wetlands – that their previous concert stages may have been destroyed by now. Still, it seems that some of them must be here… somewhere…

But how will I know what I’m looking/listening for? Sometimes, there are photos and recordings. Other times, there is one but not the other. And occasionally, there’s a record of a species being present, but neither a photo nor a recording to reference. 

Where do I even start with this?

The Dusky-faced Meadow Katydid, Orchelimum campestre, would be the most common of the species I haven’t yet found. Here’s the map from Singing Insects of North America:

These records don’t tell us where the katydids are right now, though. Since Ohio has lost up to 90% of its wetlands, I have significant concerns about finding these insects where they once lived. Wetlands are being created and restored, which is wonderful. However, do these areas still have katydids present that can move into a new home? 

I’ve been looking in every wetland area to which I’ve had access. I generally find the hardy and resilient Black-legged Meadow Katydids, as they manage to live in a variety of challenging situations. They can eat the non-native narrow-leaved and hybrid cattails’ seeds and oviposit in the stems. Just recently, I even found some that were singing from phragmites stems at Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve. (Phragmites australis is also sometimes called the “common reed.” It’s much higher than I am tall, it has a large plume of a seed head, and it's extremely invasive in wetlands. I'm quite certain that you've seen these.) 

Here's a Black-legged Meadow Katydid that was climbing up into the phragmites and another who was singing from one of the thick stems. 

Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve originally was a dumping site for sludge dredged out of the Cuyahoga River, but it's now full of life and is an outstanding stopover for migrating birds. It's on the lake shore in the city, though, and I have no idea how Black-legged Meadow Katydids even got to this newly-created land. 

I’ve seen less common species like Black-sided Meadow Katydids and Long-tailed Meadow Katydids in cattail-filled marshes on occasion, and Gladiator Meadow Katydids can be found in these cattails in the early months of summer. They seem to be eating leaves and especially seeds, and I've seen females ovipositing in their stems. (Below: Long-tailed Meadow Katydid female on cattail seed head and female Black-sided Meadow Katydid ovipositing in a cattail stem.)

Have they really adapted to non-native cattails this successfully? Could their wetland areas have only recently been taken over by invasives, and are they’re still finding some remaining native plants?

And what about Dusky-faced Meadow Katydids? No sign of them.
 

There were a few times I thought I’d found them when I looked into the faces of meadow katydids that were tan with reddish-brown markings. A closer examination always revealed that these were our common Short-winged Meadow Katydids, which are a different genus (Conocephalus instead of Orchelimum) and are considerably smaller. A great deal of color variation is possible with these katydids, especially later in the season.

For Dusky-faced Meadow Katydids and some of the other species I haven’t yet seen, I decided that Step One would be familiarizing myself with them in another state so I’d have a better idea of their appearance, habitats, and songs. 

Fortunately for me, naturalist Carl Strang has been studying crickets and katydids in the Chicago area for years, and I’ve been following his blog, Nature Inquiries, as he pursues those species that are so difficult to locate. He has a 22-county survey area and his work includes searching for the katydids and crickets that probably haven't been observed and noted recently. And…he invited Wendy and me to come visit him and meet some of those singers!

We’d briefly been to Indiana Dunes and Jasper-Pulaski in NW Indiana before, but had never heard of Kingsbury Fish and Wildlife Area. Carl had a very specific reason for taking us there in the evening. 

We pulled off on the side of the road and started searching the edge of the marshes for one of those elusive singers I’d never met, and then Carl directed us to a song that was clearly an Orchelimum. I balanced carefully in the dense vegetation and uneven terrain, tried not to swat continuously at mosquitos, and leaned forward to reach with my microphone while avoiding falling into the marsh….

 

"There he is,” Carl said softly.  

The Dusky-faced Meadow Katydid was right in front of me.

Record, or photograph – and in what order? Get songs, then try for photos!

I did both, and now I finally know what to listen for and what the physical characteristics are. 

According to Carl, this male’s face wasn’t as dark as some of them, but the face color can be variable. I could see the color pattern, and this wasn’t the face of the other species I know from this genus. 

 

And the legs – they’re quite green! No confusing that with a Black-legged Meadow Katydid.

Although I didn’t get every angle, I got at least a few photos of his yellow cerci (small appendages that project from the end of the abdomen). Each species has different shaped cerci and they’re part of the species identification.

Carl found another individual for me to record, and this one wasn’t singing the song of the first male. Instead, he was doing a very long series of tic-tic-tic calls. 

 

I've since read more about these katydids. Singing Insects of North America directed me to a 1962 paper by Edward Thomas and Richard Alexander that provided some additional information on Dusky-faced Meadow Katydids and two related species also on my search list that are even less common. There, I read the following about those “tics” I'd recorded:

“.. as many as 150 ticks have been counted in succession, produced without buzzes by a lone, undisturbed male.” 

That must have been what I was hearing and recording!

The tics are also interesting to see. They sound like single “tics,” but they are actually in pairs. “The ticks of concinnum and campestre are usually single, and when they are double, the sound produced by the opening of the tegmina is much softer than that produced by the closing stroke.” (The tegmina are the thick, upper wings on these and other insects. It’s this set of wings that’s used for sound production. They also cover the inner wings that are used for flight in those insects that fly, which not all katydids do.) If opening the tegmina happens first, that could be why the first half of each pair looks considerably softer in the sonogram.

 

Here’s one more recording of the first male’s songs interspersed with tics. 16,000 Hz is a very high song, considering the threshold of human hearing (probably for an eight-year old) is 20,000 Hz. The song could be quite loud, but we won’t perceive it that way in the field because it’s so very high.

I'm still excited about seeing and hearing these katydids, and that made me all the more determined to find them in Ohio. 

However, it's 45 degrees and raining as I write this on October 3rd. I still haven't found Dusky-faced Meadow Katydids in Ohio yet, but I'm already planning where to search for them next August and September.  

Ten months is a long time to wait!