Ant crickets

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ant crickets
Myrmecophilus acervorum

Myrmecophilus acervorum

Systematics
Class : Insects (Insecta)
Polyneoptera
Order : Grasshoppers (Orthoptera)
Subordination : Long- probe horror (Ensifera)
Superfamily : Grylloidea
Family : Ant crickets
Scientific name
Myrmecophilidae
Saussure , 1874

The ant crickets (Myrmecophilidae) are a family of grasshoppers with 71 species in 5 genera worldwide. The most species-rich and at the same time only genus occurring in Europe is Myrmecophilus .

features

These are small grasshoppers with a body length between almost 2 and about 12 millimeters, but mostly only up to 4 millimeters, the small species are the smallest grasshoppers. They are usually light brownish or yellowish, more rarely dark brown in color. All species are wingless and have small, partially reduced, flat eyes, and tympanic organs are completely absent. But all species have prominent antennae as tactile organs, which are deflected into large antenna pits, and multi-parted, long cerci . In the mouthparts, the hypopharynx in particular is enlarged and tongue-shaped, it serves as a leak organ. The hind legs are very much enlarged, at least some species have the ability to jump and have been observed jumping (escape jumps). The species are very similar to one another and can usually only be distinguished genitally morphologically.

Way of life

All species live as inquilines in buildings of social insects, in addition to ants ( myrmekophil means ant-loving) some species in termites , they live both in earth nests and in nests in cavities of wood. The biology of most species is also poorly known; more observations have been made, above all, of the European ant cricket and the North American Myrmecophilus manni . While some species are very host-specific and have only been detected in a single ant species, others are not very picky and accept a large number of ant species that are not closely related to one another as hosts. In some cases a genetic differentiation of the strains living in different ant species has been demonstrated (possibly cryptospecies ), but this was not the case in all species. The species Myrmecophilus americanus was introduced almost worldwide with its only host, the invasive tropical species Paratrechina longicornis , possibly also to Europe.

As far as is known, ant crickets live as kleptoparasites on food and prey remains. At least some species can also trigger the ants' feeding reflex through contact stimuli ( trophallaxis ). It is sometimes claimed that ant eggs or brood are also eaten, but apparently no direct observations have been made. In the laboratory, the animals are not picky about their diet and may have been a. already bred with dried fish food and an egg-honey mixture.

They camouflage themselves against the ants by absorbing hydrocarbons , which act as pheromones, from the cuticle of the ants and thus take on the smell of the nest. However, the ants sometimes react quite aggressively to the crickets when they meet them directly, and in some cases kills have been observed. However, the crickets usually escape because they are faster and more agile than their hosts.

Mating was only observed in Myrmecophilus manni . In this species, the male marks a certain place and then tries to maneuver a female there. When the female reaches the marked spot, she is ready to mate and is fertilized by transferring a spermatophore . However, some species, including probably Myrmecophilus acervorum, reproduce parthenogenetically ; males are absent or extremely rare in them. After the egg has matured, the female lays the eggs with her ovipositor at a shallow depth (1 to 2 millimeters) in the substrate inside the ant burrow; the animals are not able to penetrate deeper with their soft ovipositor. The animals go through five nymph stages. Even with the species that live in a temperate climate, reproduction apparently takes place almost all year round, nymphs and adults can be observed side by side all year round. Adults reach a lifespan of two, possibly even three years.

Ant crickets occasionally wander with their host ants on the tracks they have laid. In this way, they reach new nests, especially in species that have established a colony through nest division.

Phylogeny and Systematics

According to morphological characteristics, the ant crickets belong to the Grylloidea (cricket-like), many processors noticed similarities to the family Mogoplistidae , with which they were sometimes united in their own superfamily. Molecular analyzes based on homologous DNA sequences seem to confirm that they belong to the Grylloidea, their sister group could also be the family of the mole crickets ( Gryllotalpidae ) or crickets ( Gryllidae ).

The family includes only one subfamily (Myrmecophilinae) with five recent genera.

Fossil evidence

Only one fossil species has been assigned to the family so far, Araripemyrmecophilops gracilis . The find comes as a compression fossil in limestone from the Cretaceous Santana Formation of Crato, Brazil. They are around 112 to 125 million years old.

swell

  • Piotr Nasrecki: Grasshoppers and their relatives. Encyclopedia of Biodiversity Volume 3. Academic Press, 2000. ISBN 0122268652

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sigfrid Ingrisch: Order Orthoptera Oliver, 1789. In: Zhang, Z.-Q. (Ed.) Animal biodiversity: An outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness. Zootaxa 3148: 195-197.
  2. ^ Douglas W. Whitman (2008): The significance of body size in the Orthoptera: a review. Journal of Orthoptera Research 17 (2): 117-134.
  3. ^ A b Fritz Schimmer (1909): Contribution to a monograph of the Gryllode genus Myrmecophila Latr. Journal of Scientific Zoology 93: 409. scan online
  4. ^ A b c d e Greg Henderson & Rooger D. Akre (1986): Biology of the myrmecophilous cricket Myrmecophila manni (Orthoptera, Gryllidae). Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 59 (3): 454-467.
  5. ↑ Takashi Komatsu, Munetoshi Maruyama, Syouhei Ueda, Takao Itino (2008): mtDNA Phylogeny of Japanese Ant Crickets (Orthoptera: Myrmecophilidae): Diversification in Host Specificity and Habitat Use. Sociobiology 52 (3): 553-565.
  6. ↑ James K. Wetterer: Worldwide spread of the longhorn crazy ant, Paratrechina longicornis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Myrmecological News 11: 137-149.
  7. ↑ James K. Wetterer, Sylvain Hugel (2014): First North American Records of the Old World Ant Cricket Myrmecophilus americanus (Orthoptera: Myrmecophilidae). Florida Entomologist 97 (1): 126-129.
  8. ↑ Jean-Yves Rasplus & Alain Roques (2010): Dictyoptera (Blattodea, Isoptera), Orthoptera, Phasmatodea and Dermaptera. Chapter 13.3. In: Roques A et al. (Editors): Alien terrestrial arthropods of Europe. BioRisk 4 (2): 807-831. doi : 10.3897 / biorisk.4.68
  9. ↑ Birgit C. Schlick-Steiner, Florian M. Steiner, Alfred Buschinger (2003): Ant crickets (Myrmecophilus spp.) In the scientific no man's land of Central Europe (Ensifera: Myrmecophilidae). Contributions to entomofaunistics 4: 67-73.
  10. ↑ T. Akino, R. Mochizuki, M. Morimoto, R. Yamaoka (1996): Chemical camouflage of myrmecophilous cricket Myrmecophilus sp. to be integrated with several ant species. Japanese Journal of Applied Entomology and Zoology 40: 39-46.
  11. ↑ Zhijun Zhou, Haiyan Ye, Yuan Huang, Fuming Shi (2010): The phylogeny of Orthoptera inferred from mtDNA and description of Elimaea cheni (Tettigoniidae: Phaneropterinae) mitogenome. Journal of Genetics and Genomics 37: 315-324. doi : 10.1016 / S1673-8527 (09) 60049-7
  12. ↑ J. Daniel Fenn, Hojun Song, Stephen L. Cameron, Michael F. Whiting (2008): A preliminary mitochondrial genome phylogeny of Orthoptera (Insecta) and approaches to maximizing phylogenetic signal found within mitochondrial genome data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 49: 59-68.
  13. Jump up ↑ Frederic Legendre, Tony Robillard, Hojun Song, Michael F. Whiting, Laure Desutter-Grandcolas (2010): One hundred years of instability in ensiferan relationships. Systematic Entomology 35: 475-488. doi : 10.1111 / j.1365-3113.2009.00519.x
  14. ↑ Myrmecophilidae at Orthoptera Species File online (Version 5.0 / 5.0)
  15. ↑ Myrmecophilus (www.myrmecophilus.de) by Thomas Stalling, as of 2013 ( Memento from December 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ Heller, K.-G., Korsunovskaya, 0., Ragge, DR, Vedenina, V., Willemse, F., Zhantiev, RD & Frantsevich, L. (1998): Check-List of European Orthoptera. Articulata Supplement 7: 1-61.
  17. ↑ T. Stalling (2013): A new species of ant-loving cricket from Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain (Orthoptera, Myrmecophilidae). Graellsia 69 (2): 153-156.
  18. ^ AV Gorochov (1993): Grylloidea (Orthoptera) of Saudi Arabia and adjacent countries. Fauna of Saudi Arabia 13 79-97.
  19. ^ Siegfrid Ingrisch (1995): A new ant cricket from Borneo (Ensifera: Grylloidea). Entomological Journal 105 (21): 421-440.
  20. ^ RG Martins-Neto (1991): Sistemática dos Ensifera (Insecta, Orthopteroida) da Formação Santana, Cretáceo Inferior do Nordeste do Brasil. Acta Geologica Leopoldensia 32: 5-160.

Web links

Commons : Ant crickets (Myrmecophilidae)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files