Heteropternis obscurella (Blanchard, 1853)

(i) Pair Formation
In the field solitary males produced ticking sounds by kicking out with the hind tibiae and striking the ends of the wings. (The sounds produced are similar to that shown in Figure 2, first sound.) Under laboratory conditions ticking was only performed by isolated males evidently not interacting with other individuals. No females were attracted to this signal. However, the context of the signal suggests that it very probably has a female-attracting function. Males alternated regularly with left and right legs in producing successive ticks; two to four ticks were produced in each series (see diagram below). But males with one leg produced ticks at the same rate with this leg, i.e. the remaining leg moved twice as fast to produce the normal species song. One-legged males usually produced two and only occasionally three ticks per song. The interval between series of ticks was fairly constant.

Two-legged male: rlrl, rlr, Irlr, Irl, Irl, etc. (c. 9 ticks per sec at 90°F).

One-legged male: rr, rr, rrr, rr, etc.

(l and r represent ticks with left and right legs respectively; a comma indicates the end of a song.) [1].

References