Re: insects at night
- To: Deborah Ferber <a*@seanet.com>
- Subject: Re: insects at night
- From: L* R* <l*@peak.org>
- Date: Sat, 1 May 1999 20:38:50 -0700 (PDT)
You could get a good picture of the insect life of the western
Mediterranean by browsing the works of the French naturalist Jean-Henri
Fabre, who wrote a number of books on the behavior of insects in southern
France at the turn of the last century. All of these are in English
translation, with such titles as LIFE OF THE CICADA.
The general types would be familiar to Americans, especially those living
in the se US. There would be true crickets, _Gryllus_; katydids of
several types [family Tettigoniidae]; and mole crickets, _Gryllotalpa_, as
well as [mostly day-singing] locusts and grasshoppers, and a number of
species of cicadas [unrelated, of course, to the cricket clan].
The insects of the eastern Mediterranean, especially in desert areas, gets
a little more exotic, and many of the cricket types there are wildly
armored, and often flightless.
There are hardly any insects other than the cricket/grasshopper group and
the cicadas that would be thought of as musical, though many others from
mosquitoes to beetles produce short-range sounds as a means to courtship.
loren russell, corvallis, oregon
On Sat, 1 May 1999, Deborah Ferber wrote:
> I have an odd question for the group, especially anyone from Egpyt, Greece
> or Turkey. I know this is off the path of our regular discussion, but I'm
> hoping that insects from the Mediterranean, being part of the natural world
> (and a plant's life), could be considered for a moment. For a fiction novel
> I'm writing, I'd like to know what insects from that part of the world make
> sounds in the summer at night (like crickets or cicadas do here in the US).
> I hope you don't think I'm too crazy asking this, but perhaps some of you
> have fond memories of night sounds from travels or living in that part of
> the world.
>
> Would a lively discussion of symbiotic relationships between insects and
> plants of the Medit regions allow people to forgive me for this transgression?
>
>
