Imagine this: on a quiet night in Hawaii, the usual symphony of chirping crickets suddenly vanishes. However, it’s not just a natural lull, it’s the evolution cricket in action. This real-life phenomenon is the centerpiece of a ready-to-use biology case study on evolution cricket.
It’s built around the discovery that a mutation makes male crickets go silent. Moreover, the mutation helped them survive and reproduce. This case study challenges students to think about how evolution works.
🧬 The Story: Evolution on Fast Forward
On the island of Kauai, male field crickets once sang loudly to attract mates. But when a parasitic fly arrived that could home in on the song and kill the singer, silence became a survival strategy. A genetic mutation called flatwing rendered some males mute, unable to sing. You would think this would be a disadvantage for the insects, but surprisingly, those males began to thrive! The silent insects were able to avoid predation, improving their changes of passing on the silent mutation.
Students will explore:
- How natural selection gave silent males a survival advantage
- How sexual selection typically favors song, yet flatwing males still reproduced
- Why the flatwing trait spread so rapidly through the population
This story isn’t fictional — it’s based on real, peer-reviewed research published by scientists investigating evolution as it happened.
🧪 What’s in the Lesson?
This downloadable case study includes everything you need.
Additionally, it supports a powerful, standards-aligned classroom experience.
- Engaging, student-friendly reading
- Background info on cricket behavior and mating
- Reading comprehension questions
- Analysis of a real graph from the original scientific study
- Free response prompt
Related Lessons
Case Study – The Island of the Colorblind – explore human evolution, genetic drift, and population bottleneck
Mutations and Evolution in Aquatic Mammals – lessons from whales that focuses on nonsynonymous mutations
Why Can’t We Be Friends – explore isolating mechanisms, such as behavioral, temporal, and geographic
Survival of the Sneakiest – this cartoon describes the cricket’s mating behavior in a student-friendly way