1972] 
Walker — Deciduous Wings 
313 
they would have been reported. The only instances known to me 
of wing shedding in crickets other than Anurogryllus are in Gryl- 
lus. R. D. Alexander (personal communication ca. i960, 1972) 
told me he had seen a Gryllus bimaculatus De Geer female pull off 
and eat the wings of a courting male. In handling living macrop- 
terous G. rubens Scudder, I have noted that the wings occasionally 
detach with only a slight pull. More recently I have tried pulling 
the wings from alcohol-preserved specimens of G. rubens. In both 
macropterous and micropterous individuals the wings were often 
easily detached. They tore just distal to the axillary sclerites and 
left stumps like those in Anurogryllus. These specimens had been 
freshly killed within the first week of adult life and had never 
flown. Of more than 100 such specimens examined none was al- 
ready dealated. 
Two attributes of wing shedding that have probably contributed 
to its evolution are ( 1 ) it sometimes aids escape from predators (cf. 
G. rubens escaping from my grasp) and (2) it allows functionless 
or no-longer-functional wings to be eaten (cf. many insects, includ- 
ing crickets, eating their exuviae, apparently to nutritional advan- 
tage). 
Summary 
In three species of Anurogryllus that are superficially dimorphic 
in wing length all “micropterous” individuals have the stumps of 
longer wings. The dimorphism is in the occurrence of wing shed- 
ding and is not known to correlate with a dimorphism in wing 
length. 
References 
Alexander, R. D, 
1961. Aggressiveness, territoriality, and sexual behavior in field crickets 
(Orthoptera: Gryllidae). Behaviour 17: 130-223. 
1968. Life cycle origins, speciatiom, and related phenomena in crickets. 
Quart. Rev. Biol. 43 : 1-41. 
Imms, A. D. 
1957. A general textbook of entomology, 9th ed. (rev. by Q. W. Rich- 
ards and R. G. Davies). Methuen, London. 886 p. 
Kennedy, J. S., and H. L. G. Stroyan 
1959. Biology of aphids. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 4: 139-160. 
Mackerras, M. J. 
1970. Blattodea (Cockroaches), p. 262-274, In Div. Entomol. Com- 
monwealth Sci. Ind. Res. Org., Camberra, Insects of Australia, 
Melbourne Univ. Press, Melbourne. 
