MOLE CRICKETS

      Of all the kinds of crickets I have seen, or heard, northern mole crickets are the most unusual.  And those crickets are so-named because they live much like moles in the same underground habitat both types of creatures are well adapted to.

     Real moles and mole crickets demonstrate how genes and habitats shape body forms into a specific habitat.  Genes dictate the body form, but the habitat dictates what body forms will continue to thrive in a particular habitat to the age of reproduction.  Though unrelated, moles and mole crickets are both adapted to living in underground burrows, another case of convergence.

     Like moles, mole crickets have small eyes to keep soil out of them.  They can't see in the dark anyway.  Mole crickets have shovel-like front feet, with "claws", to dig tunnels in soil, especially moist soil.  And like moles, mole crickets have fine "hairs" that sheds soil off them.  Also, mole crickets are about an inch and a half long, brown and range in much of the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains.  They have short antennae for living in burrows at the plant root level and small back legs that are no good for leaping; but one can't jump in a tunnel.  

     I first heard mole crickets in moist Lancaster County, Pennsylvania meadows during September evenings years ago, but I thought they were frogs croaking.  The sound was like a loud, guterral chanting.  I couldn't find the chanter in the grass and I thought "this is not the time for frogs to be croaking".  Then I thought of crickets and visited a field guide to insects.  I discovered that I was hearing mole crickets in moist-soil burrows in those short-grass pastures.        

     Mole crickets ingest plant roots that extend into their moist, underground tunnels.  And these crickets are the prey of striped skunks that dig them out.  And they are eaten by wolf spiders, toads, garter snakes, shrews and birds living in meadows.  

     Male mole crickets' raucous chirping is loud so males and females can find each other for mating.  Each male digs a bulb-shaped chamber near the surface where he chirps by stridulating his wings.  The shape of the chamber amplifies his wing scraping, which female mole crickets hear and fly to him to mate in his burrow.  Then she retreats to her burrow to lay 25 to 60 eggs in her home.  Later she leaves home and seals the entrance to keep out the unwanted while her young develop.  

     Nymph and adult mole crickets overwinter in their underground homes and emerge the next late spring to feed, mate and lay eggs for another generation.  

     Mole crickets are unique little critters that almost nobody ever gets to see.  But their wing strumming is part of autumn and really neat to hear during September evenings.

       

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