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The following is an excerpt from a handout prepared for
Entomology 111: Insects and Human Affairs at the
University of California/Davis.
All insects depend on communication to some degree if only to come together for the purpose of mating. Many insects employ chemicals (called pheromones) that produce odors used as sexual attractants. Others use visual cues such as bright colors on the wings or flashing lights, in the case of fireflies, to get the attention of potential mates. Crickets have developed auditory signals to a high degree, the males producing distinct "calling", "courtship" and "staying together" songs which, respectively, attract females, induce them permit mating, and restrain them from mating again with other males before they have laid eggs. The calls are produced by rubbing together ridges on the wings called files and scrapers in a manner similar to that in which a bow produces sound from a violin. Jiminy Cricket might have been more entomologically correct if he had six legs, compound eyes and played a fiddle instead of crooning.A.E. Dolbear, a professor of physics at Tufts College in Medford, Massachusetts asserted, in 1857, that there is a correlation between the field cricket chirping and the ambient temperature:
T= 50 + (N-40)/4
where T is the temperature, in degrees Fahrenheit and N is the number of chirps per minute.