Black Horned Bird Lab Report

The black-horned tree cricket also known as the Oecanthus nigricornis is native to central North America and is the focal animal for this lab report. The following behaviors were observed on Thursday, September 28, 2017 at approximately 3:00 pm, in a controlled lab (room DV 4072). The study was conducted within a dark room using a red light, this light was used because it is invisible to crickets however, it assists us in visually identifying the cricket. The timer was turned on as soon as we had both the male and the female on the plant. The courtship lasted for 72 minutes, during which we expected to see the eight mating stages consisting of; pre-courtship, courtship, pre-copulatory feeding bouts, copulation attempts, spermatophore transfer,

Throughout the duration of the experiment, the female portrayed approximately 14 out of the 51 behaviors observed, in contrast, the male was very active and demonstrated majority of the behaviors observed. It is also important to note that the female was non-responsive and was inactive for the majority of the experiment. The behaviors observed fall under two main categories; either a maintenance behavior or a courtship behavior. The maintenance behaviors observed consist primarily of the crickets grooming in a distinct order, the order consisted of running their antennas through their mouth, followed by running legs through their wings, this entire process lasted a duration of about 60-78 seconds every occurrence. A subcategory of the maintenance behavior could be a foraging behavior, which consisted of the male cricket moving around from one branch to another looking for either food or other resources. Moreover, an interesting behavior observed various times throughout the experiment was both the male and female moving their antenna. There could be multiple reasons for this behavior; for example, in order to sense the surrounding environment and for a sense of smell. The movement of the antenna was observed approximately 5 times however there was not a precise time period for which this