I had a good day today, invertebrate-wise, and there are several photos in this set that would have worked very well for tonight’s blip, but I’ve decided to use this post to mark the day’s two ‘firsts’: the main image shows the first pair of speckled bush crickets I’ve ever seen mating, and the extra is the first tortoise bug I’ve ever found in our garden.
If you’d like to read a full account of the mating practices of speckled bush crickets, there’s an excellent one, with plenty of photos, here, but for everyone else, these are the basics. Having found his potential mate by singing (and unusually for Orthoptera, being sung back to), and following a little foreplay with their antennae, the male backs up to the female and pushes his abdomen under hers. If she wants to proceed, she bends her abdomen downwards while he arches his upward, until their genitalia lock together. He then transfers a spermatophore to her, which is the white globule you can see in this photo. The spermatophore has a sperm sac at its core, surrounded by a mass of edible material which is his nuptial gift to her. (Personally, I prefer emeralds, but each to their own.)
After copulation is over, the female dismounts and takes the spermatophore to a quiet place, going with it to make sure no-one disturbs it; the sperm moves from the sac into her spermatheca, and she then eats the rest of the spermatophore. However unpleasant this might sound, it could be worse: in some cricket species, the female’s post-coital snack is the male, while he’s too exhausted from his exertions to get out of the way. Which puts a whole new spin on the old joke about the perfect boyfriend being the one who makes love to you till 3am and then turns into a pizza.
Moving swiftly on, I was barely over the excitement (oh, do stop) of seeing the crickets in cop, when I spotted the tortoise bug on some pond sedge at the edge of the wildlife pond. Given that it’s just four weeks since I met my first one ever at Trench Wood, I think this shield-backed bug must be having an especially good year. It wasn’t especially pleased about my attentions but didn’t fly away, which in one way was good, but in another was slightly disappointing because I would like to see how one of these bugs unpacks its wings from underneath its pronotum. I’d hoped that my new favourite YouTube channel, Ant Lab, might have filmed a member of the Scutelleridae taking off, but if so I haven’t been able to find the segment. I do recommend his films though – my favourites so far are this one, and this one.
