The class anticipated many difficulties in beginning our experiment. While assembling our apparatus we had the following problems:
- Locating a company that sold phonograph cartridges (Garage-A-Record) and order one
- Figuring out how we would place the cartridge in the terrarium and design a way to keep the cartridge stable.
- Make sure that the system was shielded
- Having the correct inputs and outputs
In addition we had the following challenges in trying to record the insects:
- Locating and catching the insects was difficult because we started in September, after leafhopper mating season
- Once we did catch a few insects, we had difficulty sustaining them
- The insects that lived were either too active (jumping all over the terrarium) or totally inactive
- We only have data from one leaf hopper, and our recordings are only a half-hour long.
In the future we plan to raise a colony of leafhoppers, so that we can take recording from insects communicating with each other. In addition, we plan to investigate the profound implications of communication among leafhoppers. We plan to design several situations in which we expose the insects to a variety of stimuli (e.g. predators or food sources) and then record and observe their subsequent behavioral and communication responses. For further discussion of topics see Insect Communication Discussion panel. Dr. Randy Hunt is sending us a new species (Graminella nigifrons) to study as well.