Sex Sells!!!!

[tippy]

Mormon Crickets Invading Western States
1 hour, 37 minutes ago Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!


By SANDRA CHEREB, Associated Press Writer

PALOMINO VALLEY, Nev. - Swarms of Mormon crickets are marching across the West, destroying rangeland and crops, slickening highways with their carcasses and leaving disgusted residents in their wake.


AP Photo



"It's yucky," said Amy Nisbet of Elko in northeast Nevada, where this year crickets made their first appearance in recent memory. "You drive down the street and they pop like bubble wrap."


Mild winters and three years of drought have provided ideal conditions for the insects, which hatch in the spring and feed through the summer. Experts say this year's infestation in Nevada, Utah and Idaho could be the worst in decades.


Five million acres are infested in Nevada with the 2 1/2-inch long creeping insects, said Jeff Knight, entomologist with the Nevada Department of Agriculture.


"I've seen them eat weeds in a field but leave the alfalfa," Knight said. "Other times, they'll just strip the crop bare."


Their voracious appetites take in anything — sagebrush, alfalfa, wheat, barley, clover, seeds, grasses, vegetables. At a density of just one cricket per square yard, they can consume 38 pounds of forage per acre as they pass through an area. They don't fly, but can hop and crawl a mile in a day and up to 50 miles in a season. And before they die in the fall, they lay the eggs that will become next year's swarm.


The Mormon cricket actually is a katydid, similar to a grasshopper. It got its name in 1848 when swarms invaded the fields of Mormon settlers in Utah. According to lore, the settlers prayed for divine assistance that arrived in the form of gulls, which ate the insects and saved the crops.


Though Knight couldn't provide an economic damage estimate, he said this year's infestation is twice as widespread as last year. The bugs are showing up in places they haven't been seen before, such as Elko's city limits and Palomino Valley north of Reno.


Last week, Elko County commissioners declared a state of emergency because of the worsening two-week infestation. Officials in southwestern Idaho say the infestation there is the worst since World War II.


"They've been building up there on the Boise front for several years, but last year was the first year everything seems to have coalesced and really erupted," said Mike Cooper of the Idaho Department of Agriculture.


"They're cyclic and they build up over a number of years, kind of peak, and then usually some kind of natural disease comes in and starts taking them down," Cooper said.


In Utah, agriculture officials estimate 6 million acres — more than double last year's plague — will be infested before the crickets die off.


Dick Wilson of the Utah Department of Agriculture said the dismal predictions were "all true. (My staff) are all out in the field, working seven days a week" fighting the bugs.


Earlier this spring, Nevada treated about 66,000 acres with an insecticide that kills the insects before they mature. But as the treatment cuts down their numbers in one area, they pop up somewhere else.


The chief weapon is carbaryl, an insecticide commonly known as Sevin. It is mixed with bran and spread before the crickets as they advance. Crickets lured to the bait quickly die. The poisoned carcasses are consumed by cannibalistic fellow crickets, which also die.


State officials said their priority is to protect public lands, crops — and motorists. In Idaho the state has posted warning signs on State Route 55. Crickets smashed by cars create a mush slicker than ice.


"We're doing our best to keep them off the highway," said Martin Larraneta, a state entomologist coordinating cricket controls in Elko. "It can be like a grease slick."


So far there are no reports of accidents caused by the crickets.

While serious, this year's outbreak isn't the most severe in Nevada history, experts said.

A 1939 state publication noted an infestation in Eureka County in 1882, when trains were unable to travel the main line of the Central Pacific Railroad "due to the rails being so thoroughly greased with crushed crickets," state archivist Guy Rocha said.

In the 1930s, a band of crickets 12 miles long and at times several feet deep was reported in Elko County, Rocha said.

The crickets have existed for millions of years and were once a food source for American Indians. But the swarms covering fields and roads and houses horrify modern residents.

"When it comes to something that's six-legged, people have a big problem with that," Knight said.

___

On the Net:

http://extension.usu.edu/hoppers/htm...oncrickets.htm

[Brian Olewnick]

Cute li'l bugger

[Jimmy Cantiello]

[Sergio Zamora]

So just hire a bunch of mormons to pray.

[patricia]

Originally posted by Jimmy Cantiello

Ah yes. Jimminy. Obviously, the Duke Ellington of the cricket world. Spiffy, tuneful and cute as Hell.

[Monte Smith]

[jesus marion joseph]

I remember one year when the gypsy moths flourished here in the northeast (this was mid-80s) in such large numbers that they stripped all of the trees of their leaves and left mushed guts on the railroad tracks, rendering them impassable in places. Coulda' used some Mormons that year.

[Pete C]

Originally posted by patricia
Ah yes. Jimminy. Obviously, the Duke Ellington of the cricket world. Spiffy, tuneful and cute as Hell.

His voice, Cliff "Ukelele Ike" Edwards was a delight. I read once that he recorded the first scat vocal.

[Pete C]

[tippy]

Please be warned, this is TOTALLY shocking:

Cricket Study Offers Clues to Female Promiscuity in Some Species

Hillary Mayell
for National Geographic News
January 14, 2002


Evolutionary biologists have long wondered why females in most species typically mate with more than one male. An experiment by two researchers provides the first known evidence that female promiscuity is a hedge against giving birth to the young of a sibling or close relative.

"Our study suggests that females may benefit from promiscuity because it allows them to reduce the likelihood that their offspring will be inbred," said Tom Tregenza, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Leeds, Great Britain.

The reason males take multiple partners is easy to explain; every mating offers the opportunity for begetting additional offspring.

For females, however, promiscuity looks to be a curious choice. Mating is costly. A female can produce only a limited number of offspring in her lifetime, and bearing and raising young takes a physical toll.

In addition, the female gets plenty of sperm in one mating—more than she can use, in fact. So why seek multiple mates?

Earlier studies of adders, sand lizards, and other insects have shown that females' mating with more than one male is associated with higher egg or offspring viability.

In this study, published in the January 3 issue of the journal Nature, Tregenza and colleague Nina Wedell obtained evidence that by mating with several males, females avoid the low viability of eggs that monogamous females risk if their one mate turns out to be a relative.

Avoiding Incest

Mating with a close relative enhances the possibility of genetic incompatibility, resulting in birth defects, reduced survival rates for offspring, or eggs not hatching at all.

Tregenza and Wedell found that while females might not be able to pick their mates, they were able to choose which sperm to use after mating.

In the study, female field crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus) that mated only with siblings hatched significantly fewer eggs than females who mated with non-relatives, which is what the researchers had expected.

Curiously, the females who mated with a sibling and with a non-relative produced the same number of viable eggs as a female who mated with two non-relatives. The order in which she mated with the sibling and non-sibling had no impact on egg viability.

The fact that hatching success was not affected when a cricket mated with both a close relative and a non-relative led the researchers to conclude that a female could choose which sperm to use to fertilize her eggs after mating. The exact process by which she does this is still unknown.

In most insects, sperm is passed to a female in a special packet, not simply as a fluid, explained Wedell, who is also an evolutionary biologist and co-author of the study. In crickets, the male attaches this packet to the female's genitalia. After mating, the sperm packet remains attached to the female for half an hour or so, gradually pumping sperm into her.

Whether a female simply doesn't store the sperm packets of siblings, or whether some chemical process occurs in her reproductive tract that causes the sperm to be rejected or rendered useless, remains a mystery.

"Possibly females can only tell for sure during mating that they have picked a sibling as a mate and so only then can they choose not to store sperm," said Tregenza. "Alternatively, perhaps only the intimate association between the females reproductive tract and the sperm themselves allows females to tell related from unrelated males."

How often sibling mating actually occurs in the wild is also unknown. In the laboratory, the female crickets could distinguish closely related males by smell, so the researchers aren't sure why the females don't simply avoid mating with relatives.

The sheer number of eggs laid by each female may make sibling mating in the wild an inevitable hazard. "Females typically lay around 100 eggs in three days, but they can go on for much longer," said Tregenza.

"Also," he added, "it could be that although females can avoid matings [mating requires the female to crawl onto the male's back], males continue to harass them by singing and chasing them around. So it could actually be less costly for females to give up and mate with a male than continue to resist his advances."

Implications for Other Species

Multiple mating by females occurs in nearly every species. The role of female choice in mating behavior has broad implications for understanding how species evolve, competition between males, mate choice, and why males typically produce so many millions of tiny sperm.

Tregenza and Wedell believe that whatever drives female crickets to mate with lots of different males is likely to be important in other species as well.

Because incest is a risk in many species, it is likely that crickets are not alone in their ability to use promiscuity to their advantage, said Tregenza.

"If the ability of female field crickets to avoid using sperm from related males is shared by other species, this form of genetic incompatibility avoidance may be an important factor promoting female promiscuity across taxa," the researchers concluded.

[Brian Olewnick]

Always thought there was something crickety about him.....

[tippy]

Uncanny, Brian!

[Dr Dave]

Cricket, shmicket. THIS is a katydid:

[tippy]

Dr. Dave, I can't keep up with all of your terrifica avatars...I rather miss the bobbing music note (?) though...

[walto]

Can there any longer be surprise that cricket females tend toward promiscuity?

[Dr Dave]

I'm in a period of transition.

Mormons PRAY??

[Brian Olewnick]

Hey, Tip, quit deleting your posts! I mean, what if I had come up with some witty rejoinder to your pray/prey comment? (I was trying, but coming up empty). Think of how foolish my comment would've looked, dangling out there like Tanager's scrotumbird. Please consider the repercussions of rash deleting before acting!

[tippy]

Brian, it's Friday and I'm finished cracking skulls for the week so...don't tread on me, okay???

[Brian Olewnick]

Yes ma'am.

[tippy]

Hey, that's pretty cool.

I am interested to know why Scott thinks Mormons don't pray.

[Pete C]

Originally posted by tippy
The reason males take multiple partners is easy to explain; every mating offers the opportunity for begetting additional offspring.

That wouldn't be my rationale.

[tippy]

Pete, it's like people who think that plants don't feel pain when really they are dying a very slow and painful death by acid disintegration in the digestive tract of vegetarians.

Crickets probably mate at every opportunity because it feels good.

[walto]

"The reason males take multiple partners is easy to explain; every mating offers the opportunity for begetting additional offspring."


And the reason certain females take multiple partners is also easy to explain; every mating offers the opportunity for beheading and eating additional husbands.

[tippy]

Originally posted by walto
"The reason males take multiple partners is easy to explain; every mating offers the opportunity for begetting additional offspring."


And the reason certain females take multiple partners is also easy to explain; every mating offers the opportunity for beheading and eating additional husbands.

Note to self: Damn, Walto's on to me. Must behead.

[Dr Dave]

Tippy: I like you, man.

Unsuspecting male: Yeah?

Tippy: Yeah, want to give me your head?

Unsuspecting male: Give head? Why, you slut! Yeah!

Tippy: [WHAACK!] Men. They just hear what they want to hear. Check please! Sorry about the blood. Don't worry, it comes right up with OxyClean.

I just figured the Mormons only liked to have bunches of wives. Do I have the wrong cult here?

It's Friday, just lookin for trouble...............

[Monte Smith]

Cicada ("Si-Kay-Duh")


Common Name: Periodical Cicada ____ Scientific Name: Magicicada


Aliases: 13 or 17 Year Cicada; 13 or 17 Year Locust; Satan's Parakeets


Size: 1" to 1 1/2" inches


Occurrence: Early Summer. Mid-May to Mid-July (Northern areas)


Mid-April to Mid-June (Southern areas - 13 year species)


Range: Eastern U.S. - West to Iowa & Texas


Habitat: Deciduous Forests - prefers forest edges. Seldom occupies urban dwellings.


Characteristics: Appear every 13 or 17 years in enormous numbers to satiate predators. _Males congregate to form loud mating choruses that can be deafening. Females deposit eggs in the twigs of tree, often killing the host branches.


Distinguishing Marks: Red eyes, black bodies, orangish wing veins & legs, "W" shape on fore wings.

[Captain Hate]

Originally posted by tippy
Crickets probably mate at every opportunity because it feels good.

Is that what put the smile on Jimminy's face?

Wow! Satan's parakeets. I like that. I believe that was what N'Sync was originally going to name their band.