Hawaii’s male crickets can’t hide from their buzzing boogeymen for long.
In just a handful of years, cricket-killing parasitic flies have evolved hearing that’s more sensitive to their prey’s new, covert love songs, researchers report February 20 in Current Biology.
The nocturnal fly Ormia ochracea lays its eggs on crickets, which hatch into larvae that eventually make a meal of their host. Native to continental North America, the flies were introduced to Hawaii around 1989 and began targeting the islands’ Pacific field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus), eavesdropping on their chirps to find them.
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