Bioacoustics of Stenobothrus lineatus

Typical behaviour in this species is as follows. A male begins singing the normal song; a responsive female within range will orientate towards the source of sound, and may give a short burst of response stridulation. After this, it will move towards the male, sometimes pausing to stridulate and often pausing to re- orientate. When within visual range of the male, it moves right up to the latter and when within 5 to 7 cm. stops and stridulates. The male, on seeing the female or hearing her stridulate or both, stops singing the normal song and, with or without various transitional phrases, begins the courtship song and finally leaps on the female; the genitalia being engaged, no further stridulation is made unless the female moves, or the pair is otherwise disturbed, when the male sings the copulation song (Haskell, 1957). ... During some of these experiments, certain females stridulated in response to the male song and this stridulation was recorded and analysed. Fig. 2 (A & B) shows an oscillogram and audiospectrogam of the sound. The movements of the hind femora of the female resulting in production of this sound were very similar to those of the male when the latter emits the normal song, but the movements of the female were much more jerky and the sound was emitted in short bursts.