312 
Psyche 
[December 
Prompted by these clues, I examined more than 20 “micropterous” 
specimens of each of the three species of Anurogryllus. All had 
wing stumps rather than short wings. I pulled with tweezers on one 
of the wings of an alcohol-preserved, non-teneral macropterous speci- 
men. The wing tore loose with difficulty but left a stump like 
those of the “micropterous” specimens. Apparently all the specimens 
had once been macropterous, and the dimorphism in wing length in 
each of the three species is based on a dichotomy in wing deciduous- 
ness rather than a dichotomy in wing length in the newly formed 
adult. 
Discussion 
The term micropterous is inappropriate for crickets with the 
stumps of deciduous wings. The term dealated has been used for 
similar cases in other insects and seems appropriate here. 
So far as now known, dealated Anurogryllus are originally ma- 
cropterous rather than micropterous, but since wing shedding has not 
been observed in either of the West Indian species, the length of 
the shed wings is unknown. Furthermore the timing of shedding is 
not known for the West Indian species. One possibility is that it 
occurs only in teneral adults, as in the U. S. species. If this be 
the case, shedding the wings could depend on either the wings being 
weakly attached to the stumps or on wing-removing behavior or on 
both. If some or all teneral adults are competent both to retain and 
to shed their wings, their remaining macropterous or becoming de- 
alates would most likely be an adaptive response to some aspect of 
their environment. For example a stimulus associated with dense 
population might inhibit wing shedding and promote emigration. 
A second and contrasting possibility concerning the timing of 
wing shedding in West Indian Anurogryllus is that none sheds its 
wings while teneral and all or nearly all individuals disperse by 
flight before losing their wings. Situations analogous to this possi- 
bility occur in termites, ants, and perhaps certain zorapterans ( Imms, 
1 957 ) * I know of no case analogous to the first possibility (i.e. 
dimorphism with nonmigratory individuals shedding potentially func- 
tional wings). Certain Australian roaches of the genus Panepthia 
are apparently like the U. S. Anurogryllus — -i.e. all individuals 
shed well-developed wings shortly after the final molt (Mackerras, 
1970; p. 273). 
The extent to which crickets other than Anurogryllus have decid- 
uous wings is unknown. If such wings were characteristic of any 
of the species in which wing dimorphism has been carefully studied, 
