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Journal of Experimental Biology 43,139-153 (1965)
Published by Company of Biologists 1965

Neuronal Mechanisms Underlying Control of Sound Production in a Cricket: Acheta Domesticus

ARTHUR EWING ¹ and GRAHAM HOYLE ²

¹ Biology Department, University of Oregon; Department of Zoology, University of Edinburgh
² Biology Department, University of Oregon

1. The singing of the cricket Acheta domesticus has been studied with a view to examining the neuronal control mechanisms underlying the sound production.

2. Electrical activity was recorded from the muscles responsible for wing opening and closing during singing in intact, freely-moving crickets.

3. Three kinds of song which are both structurally distinct and clearly different in behavioural context were studied in detail: calling, aggression and courtship.

4. Each song is composed of a group of pulses of sound and each pulse corresponds to a single wing-closing movement. The songs differ only in regard to either the number of pulses in a group, or the loudness of the pulses.

5. The opening is caused by the tergosternal muscles receiving a brief burst of excitatory nerve impulses. Extra impulses, leading to extra wide opening, occur before loud sounds.

6. The closing movement is initiated by the first and second basalar and subalar muscles acting synergistically. The force, but not the velocity, of the closing stroke is increased by a late burst of activity in the indirectly acting dorsal longitudinal muscles, leading to louder sound.

7. Weak pulses are the result of (probably) only S axons firing. When F axons fire in addition loud sounds result.

8. During courtship songs the sound pulses are mainly weak and a large number of pulses occur consecutively.

9. The kind of neuronal machinery required to produce the observed output is considered theoretically, and a tentative simple scheme proposed.

10. It is not necessary to postulate separate neuronal centres for each sound, and a small number of neurons could, in principle, provide the underlying control of the different kinds of cricket song.

Note:

Supported by research grant G21451 from U.S. National Science Foundation