Rebecca Usher

The red-headed meadow katydid (Orchelimum erythrocephalum) is a potential model species for studying topics of interest to behavioral ecology, including acoustic communication, mate searching behavior, and predator avoidance. Although behavior for other species in the genus has been well described, there is little published about this species, which is abundant in the North Carolina Piedmont. Here, to create a descriptive foundation for behavioral study, I observed and filmed 45 solitary individual O. erythrocephalum in the field, each for a 20-minute period. I quantified behavior from videos, and I constructed ethograms and activity budgets for males and females, for both daytime and nighttime observations. Both males and females were more active during the day, as they spent more time walking and performing other behaviors than at night, and behaviors such as jumping and pivoting were most frequently followed by walking. Males produced airborne sound by stridulating for > 75% of the time during daytime trials, but males did not stridulate at night. Some aspects of activity budgets differed between sexes, as males fed for more time than females at night, and females walked for more time than males during the day. Differences in behavior between sexes and between day and night contexts may be driven at least in part by predation risk. This work will provide a foundation for studying signaling behavior, predator avoidance, and behaviors associated with finding mates for O. erythrocephalum.