Cricket Identification Key. Many thanks to all photographers who have allowed use of their excellent images. Finding and identifying a singing insect can be a wonderful.
Key to genera of field crickets and related species gryllinae. In america north of mexico the subfamily gryllinae includes more than 20 species in 7 genera. Warm summer nights bring them out en masse as the males loudly chirp up to 30 times a minute in an effort to attract a female.
They consume a variety of things like fruit leaves plant roots fungi and dead insects including dead camel crickets.
Cricket classifications taxonomists agree that crickets are a monophyletic group that is they constitute all the surviving descendents of a single ancestral species. The key will only work for adult insects the imago it is not intended for juvenile insects larvae or caterpillars so make sure you are trying to identify an adult insect. This family includes the house cricket acheta domesticus. The key may not be successful if used to identify insects outside the uk although in most cases it should still produce a correct identification.
