Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

The world of insect sounds

Dr David Chesmore, Department of Electronics, University of York

The sounds insects make are extremely varied from eating and flying to deliberate communication, mate attraction and even aggression. Many sounds cannot be heard without specialised equipment because they travel through plants or materials, or are too high pitched for us to hear. The lecture will give an insight into this fascinating world of sound, how sounds are produced, how they are recorded and how it is possible to use sounds to identify different species. The lecture will include lots of weird and wonderful sounds from caterpillars to cicadas, grasshoppers and even beetle larvae inside trees.

Report
by Ken Hutson

All insects make sounds, even butterflies and moths; incidentally so do pond snails and fish. The reasons for this are courtship, aggression and prey evasion. We were entertained to a wide variety of insect sounds, often recorded with very basic equipment. The clarity was quite exceptional

The main areas of research into this phenomenon are communication, biodiversity studies and insect pest detection. Dr Chesmore concentrated on the last of these citing many examples of threat. With imports from all over the world Britain faces many pest threats, none more serious than the Asian long-haired beetle from China that would cause £billions in losses of trees, timber and amenities if it got in here. Detection is vital. Crucially each type of insect makes a unique sound and scanners have been devised to recognise the long-haired beetle in imported timber. Work is now concentrated on developing programs to ‘teach’ computers to recognise the sounds made by more and more insects.