One of the difficult things about trying to determine behavior and interactions between species that have gone extinct is that, for obvious reasons, there aren’t any living members of that species to observe. However, a research group in China has managed to do the next best thing: Take the fossilized remains of a Jurassic-era katydid namedArchaboilus musicus and reconstruct the type of chirp that it would have made to communicate with others of its species. By looking at models of the stridulating wings and comparing to species alive today, the group was able to determine the frequency at which the cricket would have to stridulate in order to produce its characteristic chirp.
The most interesting this about this is that in the 165 million years since this species existed, there are still many species of cricket that maintain this same method of communication, with almost no change in the actual mechanism of stridulating. This means that the katydids of the Jurassic era were already capable of communication in this manner, and that natural selection favored this method of chirping enough so that the mechanism survives in descendant species to this day. The paper can be found at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/02/1118372109.full.pdf+html, and they even have a short soundfile of their predicted sound of the katydid in question at http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2012/02/03/1118372109.DCSupplemental/sm01.mov
-Eric Baeuerle
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