Ormia ochracea
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| Ormia ochracea | ||||||||||||||||
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| Ormia ochracea (Bigot, 1889) |
Ormia ochracea is a small yellow fly, a parasite of crickets. It is notable because of its exceptionally good hearing. The female is attracted by the song of the male cricket and deposits her young on him, as was discovered in 1970 by the zoologist William H. Cade. The fly is found throughout the south in the US, and has even been found as far north as Hamilton, Ontario.
The mating call of the male field cricket (Gryllus texensis) is used by Ormia ochracea in locating the cricket. Once a female fly finds a host (male cricket) she deposits a larva which then quickly borrows into the host, emerging about 7 - 10 days later, killing the host.
Ormia ochracea has become a model organism in sound localization experiments because of its unique "ears", which are complex structures inside the fly's prothorax near the bases of their front legs. The animal is too small for the time difference of sound arriving at the two ears to be calculated in the usual way, yet it can determine the direction of sound sources with exquisite precision. The tympanic membranes of opposite ears are directly connected mechanically, allowing resolution of nanosecond time differences[1][2] and requiring a new neural coding strategy.[3] Efforts to build directional microphones based on the structure of the fly's ear are underway.
[edit] References
Cade, W. H. 1975. Acoustically orienting parasitoids: Fly phonotaxis to cricket song.
Science 190: 1312-1313.
- ^ Miles RN, Robert D, Hoy RR. Mechanically coupled ears for directional hearing in the parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea. J Acoust Soc Am. 1995 Dec;98(6):3059-70. PMID 8550933 doi:10.1121/1.413830
- ^ Robert D, Miles RN, Hoy RR. Directional hearing by mechanical coupling in the parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea. J Comp Physiol [A]. 1996;179(1):29-44. PMID 8965258 doi:10.1007/BF00193432
- ^ Mason AC, Oshinsky ML, Hoy RR. Hyperacute directional hearing in a microscale auditory system. Nature. 2001 Apr 5;410(6829):686-90. PMID 11287954 doi:10.1038/35070564
[edit] External links
- Ormia ochracea (TSN 652559). Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved on 9 February 2006.
- Ormia ochracea photos and videos, from the lab of Andrew Mason at the University of Toronto
- NPR show on the hearing of Ormia ochracea
- Cade's research on Ormia ochracea, press release by the University of Lethbridge
- Whimsical depictions of fly's anatomy
- U.S. patent for technolgy based on the fly's physiology
