Listen to the call: Scientists recreate the song of a 150-year-old insect that could help rediscover its species

Scientists recreated the song of a museum specimen for the first time in 150 years.

Researchers could use the body shape and song of the insect to find out where it might still be.

An insect has been singing since 1869.

The museum's collection contains a single specimen of the katydid, which is similar to a grasshopper. Prophalangopsis obscura was first described in 1869 and hasn't been seen since.

Researchers hope that by recreating the insect's long lost call, they can find it in the wild.

Ed Baker is a bioacoustics researcher at the museum. He says, "While we're only dealing with one specimen, it's one of just a few species which survives from a group of grasshopper and cricket relatives that likely dominated during the dinosaur era."

This species has large wings which suggest it is capable of long flight and it sings a low-pitched song which travels over long distances. It is an ideal target for bats due to its habit of living out in the open and the fact that it is easy to detect.

It is believed that it is currently living in an environment without bats that feed on insects.

Some clues can be given as to what regions researchers should be looking in on the hunt for this long- forgotten species. The results of the study were published in a journal.

How do insects make noise?

There are a group of insects that form part of the Orthoptera. The body parts of these animals are rubbed together to make sounds.

Males use these noises to attract females during the summer as part of the breeding season.

Over a century ago, the sound of P. obscura was not seen in the wild. The only known specimen of the insect was presented to the museum by a British army officer.

The species hasn't been seen in a long time. The specimen was labeled as coming from "Hindustan", which the researchers believe is synonymous with the area of India under British rule.

Two female insects which looked like the male P. obscura were found in Tibet in 2005. There are differences in sex between the insects so it is not certain if they are related or not.

It could help confirm the identity of the Tibetans if they were to live together.

Researchers used 3D images of each wing to try and find out more about the species' current location. This information allowed the team to recreate the insect's song.

Ed says that insect sounds can be related to its history. It is possible to examine why species have certain song frequencies, which may be to avoid overlap with each other, and how the structure of the songs reflects their environment.

The environment might explain the low-pitched song of P. obscura. Bats are good at avoiding cold areas because they allow them to fly freely without fear of being eaten.

The cold climate of northern India and Tibet could be a good location for this insect to live.

Listen in to the past.

A number of insects' songs have been recorded by the museum and are part of a sound archive. Ed helped to make these recordings more accessible.

Ed discovered CDs and reel to reel cassettes containing insect recordings from hundreds of species while looking in the cupboard. Previously, it was time consuming and complex work to make use of them, but we were able to make them available by digitizing them.

The acoustic monitoring pilot we're hoping to do as part of the Urban Nature Project is due to the fact that people are researching them. The museum wants to use recorders to listen to the insects in the gardens.

Studying insect acoustics can be used to find out how the past sounded.

Ed wants to recreate more sounds from extinct species. In the case of P. obscura, it would allow us to build up a picture of the acoustic communities these species live in.

We can get closer to where sound evolved as a communication mechanism by going back to species that are evolutionarily older.

We're not quite sure, but we're starting to chip away at it.

More information: Charlie Woodrow et al, Reviving the sound of a 150-year-old insect: The bioacoustics of Prophalangopsis obscura (Ensifera: Hagloidea), PLOS ONE (2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270498 Journal information: PLoS ONE