Observations on the Development of Crickets

Abstract

The house cricket, Acheta domesticus (L.) (Gryllidae, Orthoptera), is a cosmopolitan and easily available insect, and is most suitable as a test animal for physiological research, as has been pointed out by Stone (1953). However, in spite of the long familiarity of entonlologists with this insect it has received very little attention in the literature, no doubt because it has never been of economic importance in Europe or North America. Such quantitative observations on its development as do exist are rather fragmentary (Kemper, 1937; Stone, 1953; Busvine, 1955). The present article describes, in a somewhat more precise way, the rate of development of the nymph of the house cricket at various temperatures and the number and duration of the nymphal stadia, as well as a satisfactory method of rearing the insect and observations on its fecundity.