Feasibility of setting up a national "moth" week... for Crickets and Katydids?

General
1

Hi all,

For a while now, I’ve had an idea in the back of my mind that it would be cool to have something like National Moth Week to get people interested in singing insects, particularly Orthoptera. Plenty of recordings get added to iNat every season, but compared to moths or even cicadas, the number of people who specifically look for the singing grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids seems paltry.

I’m thinking that the best time to do a week, or even 24 hours, with an Orthoptera focus would be somewhere between August 15th and September 15th. I realize there’s a northern bias here, as in other parts of NA many Orthoptera are singing early in the spring, or even year-round, as in Florida. However, August to September is the time when I think there will be the most Orthoptera singing in the most areas throughout the continent. There’s also the added advantage that it would not overlap with Moth Week.

The way I see it, there are a few major differences from Moth Week that may make or break any potential effort in this direction:

  1. Most of these singing insects are not seen, but heard. You could try to get a photo, but I like the idea of a non-intrusive insect project, much like we do for birds. They’re already calling, so all someone would have to do is get their phone and make a recording.

  2. Since singing Orthopterans (which will be mostly crickets and katydids) are much less known than moths generally, most people will not be able to ID what they are hearing. There are resources, to be sure, but not nearly as many as for moths or even cicadas. For example, The Songs of Insects includes mostly those from the eastern half of the country, excluding Florida and the Gulf coast. For those areas and the western half, you’d use Singing Insects of North America, which is wonderful but still has some drawbacks. Being blind and never having participated in Moth Week, I have no idea if most observers learn to identify the moths they submit, or if the job of identification would still be the domain of relatively few who comb through observations. After all, for Orthoptera, distinguishing songs can be very challenging.

3). Perhaps the biggest problem of all is, of course, momentum. The number of people I know, or know of, that are familiar with singing Orthoptera even a little, is a number I could count on my fingers and toes. So the momentum problem has a few dimensions: getting people interested enough in something they probably took for granted; keeping up their interest; possibly having them learn their local species; ultimately having them record a sound, snap a photo, or both; and for sounds at least, having them follow a few guidelines to ensure clarity and accuracy of the data. Perhaps it’s not such a tall order, but it feels like one sometimes.

To help with some of this, I could create a collection project and try to promote it in my journal. I’m considering contacting some other projects like Project PorchLight and Audio Observations from Around the World, to see if they’d be willing to boost it. It would be awesome if Moth Week would as well, though somehow I think this is below their notice. Anyway, I’m curious if any of you more experienced people have other suggestions, or think of other variables I haven’t considered, or whether this is even doable at all, or worth trying.

Thanks in advance for your feedback,

Daniel

2

I absolutely love this idea, though I’ll admit to having a forgetful ear when it comes to learning insect and bird calls haha. It is a great idea to engage multiple senses and involve those with different sensory abilities. I have participated in Moth Week and have learned a bit on visually identifying moths, so visually identifying orthopterans, especially at a later time of year when most are mature, isn’t too big of a difficulty for myself, as a public programs leader who could involve others. Audio ID would be a new thing to tackle. I’d be happy to participate and host some programs if we can get something going!

3

I don’t know how moth week works, but this sounds good. I just heard my second cicada of the year (the first was right after the crushed turtle, but I didn’t manage to record it) and a katydid and what I think is a cricket together.

4

That would be amazing, thank you! I know that Moth Week encourages people to register events with them, though I’m not sure the exact reason for this. I just figured it’s easy enough just to have a collection project with all the moth observations from that week…

I’m not necessarily looking to limit this project to audio, though I like the idea of not having to collect or net things. Besides, we’re talking about insects that you’re not typically going to find at lights, I think, and that will be calling from hard-to-reach places. That said, I’m not drawing any hard and fast lines here.

Do you have any suggestions for how to integrate the visuals, or do you think we should? I want to strike a balance of being inclusive vs. letting the visual take over, as it inevitably would with insect people, for perfectly understandable reasons. Seeing as these are singing insects, I do feel the audio aspect should be very much emphasized, regardless of whether the observer can ID it to species. Others can do that. :)

Thanks again for your response, and I’m glad to hear you like the idea!

5

Not going to try and act like I know what I am talking about but sounds pretty cool

6

The term “singing insects” might be unfamiliar to people, I read this as “stinging” repeatedly until I got to Orthopera and thought “why are they calling Hymenoptera Orthoptera??” and only realized it said “singing” when you said “singing grasshoppers”.

7

Me too!

8

This is a very good point. iNater joedziewa called it Insect Song Week - maybe that would be better? Although I really do want to focus on crickets and katydids, since cicadas have their fans. So maybe I ought to call it something more taxonomically relevant?

Thanks again for the response.

9

I love the name of Insect Song Week. It’s a bit more romantic and charismatic, because I too read ‘singing’ as ‘stinging’ at first!

10

Prefacing with: I love this idea.

As more of a plant person, I love participating in moth IDs because I can visually learn about them and I generally have a very specific guide of step-by-step what to do to catch and release them. It makes it tangible and cool to me as I am more in the touch-it-see-it-feel-it realm. (I don’t touch the moths!) From that perspective, I have what I feel is a very unpracticed ear for audio ID.

This sounds intriguing, and it sounds like you’re mostly trying to introduce people to loving these song critters. To eliminate any intimidation for new-to-song-insect people, I think it would help if you also had a step-by-step “guide” even if it is providing best practices for times of day/night and what kind of habitats people could try this in. Provide folks with resources on how to identify different insect calls once they’re done with their recordings, perhaps?

Also - from a technology standpoint, I’ve noticed we have fewer audio recordings because most people know how to open their camera on their phone and upload via the app. They may not know they have the ability to take ‘voice memos’ or audio recordings because the feature is a little more hidden. If you take the audio on your phone, I believe you have to upload via the desktop/web version of iNat, unless you are using the in-app audio recording feature. (I’ve lost audio doing that, though.) Explaining how to record sound simply as an FAQ or something could help adoption, too.

11

I have recorded sound of a stinging insect. For singing insects, should we require that the insect make sound by means other than flapping its wings?

12

Lol. Generally a “singing insect” would be any insect that intentionally uses sound for communication (principally mate attraction and territory defense). Orthoptera and cicadas are the two most obvious examples, and I mostly envision this as a way to increase interest in Orthoptera specifically. Many more insects will use substrate-borne acoustic vibrations in this manner, and a convincing case could be made that these are also singing insects. I’d love if we had more recordings of this type of thing too, but it may be outside of our current purview.

13

All great points! I’m planning to put together both a guide like you mentioned, as well as something for anyone wishing to facilitate a group effort. I don’t envision this being a very rigorously scientific project, just something to get people out there recording, and hopefully capture the interest of some.

The best ID resources are linked in the first post above, and I will include them in any guide I create, along with how to use them. I’m also in contact with the webmaster of Singing Insects of North America… We may come up with something additional. I’ll be posting here regularly! Also, I haven’t had any problems with the iNat app’s audio feature - I’ll include something for that in the guide too. Initially, I think said guide would be in the form of a journal post on a collection project, unless you have any better suggestions.

The iNater Joe Dziewa, who suggested the name Insect Song Week, also thought the third week of August was a good time. I agree, so as of right now, this is what I’m planning for.