ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses phonotactic behavior in the house cricket by measuring female cricket response on exposure to 3 experimental treatments: a broadcast recording of the normal calling song of the male, a recorded synthetic sound produced by a wave generator, and silence, the absence of acoustic stimuli to serve as a control. Following appropriate randomization, trial procedure, and statistical analysis, results will be interpreted and written up as though for submission to a scientific journal. Phonotaxis is the oriented locomotion of an animal in response to a source of airborne sound; it may be positive or negative. Females may show response to an acoustic stimulus presented alone which they would ignore in the presence of more preferred stimuli. Develop a variant of the experimental approach used in this exercise to investigate the development of phonotactic response in maturing female crickets, and/or the effect of mating on subsequent sexual receptivity of females.
