It’s better to be a groupie than a loner. At least for crickets. So says Patrick Lorch, a postdoctoral research associate in biology, who helped glue radio transmitters weighing less than half a gram onto the backs of crickets to find out what happened when they remained in a band or went out on their own.
In repeated experiments, Lorch and researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Toronto at Mississauga found that 50 to 60 percent of the insects leaving the band were killed and eaten within two days. The researchers recorded no deaths during the same period among crickets that stayed in the group. “Predation occurs anyway,” says Lorch. “But any given cricket is far better off in a group than it would be if it were on its own.”
