Scientists bring to life Jurassic bush-cricket's serenade

ORIGINAL: Asahi Shimbun

February 23, 2012

By RYOKO TAKEISHI / Staff Writer

In the next best thing to "Jurassic Park," a team of researchers from China, Britain and the United States have recreated the song of an ancient bush-cricket that prospered during the age of dinosaurs.

A reconstituted image of Archaboilus musicus, a Jurassic bush-cricket whose songs were reconstructed scientifically (Image provided by Fernando Montealegre-Zapata)

The reconstruction was based on the analysis of a 165-million-year-old fossil species, named Archaboilus musicus, from northwest China that retained detailed wing features.

The research result was published online on Feb. 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

"Using a low-pitched song, A. musicus was acoustically adapted to long-distance communication in a lightly cluttered environment, such as a Jurassic forest," said Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, a research fellow at the University of Bristol and a co-author of the research article. "Today, all species of katydids that use musical calls are nocturnal, so musical calls in the Jurassic were also most likely an adaptation to nocturnal life."

The fossil insect belongs to a group of bush-crickets that prospered from the late Triassic to the mid-Jurassic periods. It had a wingspan of about 7 centimeters. The fossil specimen was so well preserved that it retained 107 teeth on the left wing and 96 teeth on the right wing. Those teeth were used to produce sounds when it rubbed its wings together.

The scientists used microscopic methods to observe the wing structures and tooth density on the fossil. They then compared the data with those of living bush-cricket species to determine the frequency of the wing-rubbing sounds and to reconstitute the music.

It turned out that the sound was composed of short-lasting bouts and had a pitch of 6.4 kilohertz, relatively low for a chirping insect.

Staff at the Tama Zoological Park in Tokyo said the reconstituted music strongly resembled the singing of Ornebius kanetataki, a small grasshopper species that is commonly seen in hedges and grassland across modern Japan.

"For Archaboilus, as for living bush-cricket species, singing constitutes a key component of mate attraction," said Daniel Robert, a professor of biology at the University of Bristol and one of the authors of the research article.

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Listen to the recreated calls of an ancient bush-cricket by clicking link below.
Audio created by Fernando Montealegre-Zapata; 3D forest reconstruction from work by J.K. Hinz, I. Smith, H.-U. Pfretzschner, O. Wings and G. Sun