Evolution silences isle cricket populations
Scientists investigating the silence of the crickets in Hawaii have uncovered a bizarre evolutionary story that is part horror movie, part Cyrano de Bergerac.
In the most recent edition of the journal Current Biology, researchers from Scotland’s University of St. Andrews report on the separate but nearly simultaneous quieting of chirping crickets on Kauai and Oahu.
As lead researcher Nathan Bailey explained, Hawaii crickets appear to have abandoned their chirplike mating songs to avoid parasitoid flies. The flies, which are attracted to male cricket song, would lay larvae that would then burrow into the host crickets, killing them within a week.
Adaptive crickets survived and reproduced by silencing their own songs but positioning themselves — like Christian to Cyrano — next to crickets who continued to use their chirps to woo female crickets.
The silent flatwing crickets are present on both Oahu and Kauai. At first, Bailey and his team believed that a single population of silent crickets evolved on one island and spread to the other. However, further investigation made it clear that the crickets came from separate populations but adopted the same trait around the same time.
"This is an exciting opportunity to detect genomic evolution in real time in a wild system, which has usually been quite an challenge owing to the long timescales over which evolution acts," Bailey said in a release. "With the crickets, we can act as relatively unobtrusive observers while the drama unfolds in the wild."
Officials urge conservation as repair work continues on Kauai wells
About 200 people on Kauai attended a public meeting Saturday to learn more about damage to deep wells in Kalaheo, the status of repairs and temporary measures to improve water service.
The meeting was hosted by Mayor Bernard Carvalho and the Department of Water and held at the Kalaheo Neighborhood Center gymnasium.
Kalaheo residents have experienced disruptions to water service since a water pump at the bottom of a 1,000-foot well broke on May 24.
The county announced last week that repairs could take up to six weeks to complete. In the meantime, the water department installed a temporary pipeline that is expected to improve service by early this week.
The department has been reminding residents to continue water conservation measures, limiting usage to essential functions like cooking, bathing and toilet flushing. Residents are asked to refrain from washing cars and to turn off automatic sprinklers and outdoor irrigation systems and limit laundry washing.
