Crickets are an indicator of ecosystem health
The chirps of insects tell an important story
Canaries are more sensitive to carbon monoxide than people are. Thus they were routinely taken into mines as men went about their work of extracting coal. Odourless and deadly, carbon monoxide could quickly poison many miners before they even knew what was happening. The canary resolved this problem. If it stopped singing and dropped dead from its perch, this was an indicator that carbon monoxide levels were rising and that evacuation was in order. Now ecologists think they have found a “canary” that could function as a similar indicator of impending disaster for tropical ecosystems—the cricket.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Crickets in a coal mine”
From the September 24th 2022 edition
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