After sexing all thirty crickets and separating them accordingly, observers waited 5 minutes to allow the crickets to settle into their new containers. After the 5 minutes ended, two females were chosen at random to be placed into the light and dark simulation arenas. The female crickets were alone in the arenas for 3 minutes before 4 males were chosen at random (two for each arena) and placed simultaneously into the respective arenas. Once all 3 crickets were in an observation tank together, they were watched for a total of 5 minutes.
One observer attended to the trio in the light arena, while the other examined the trio in the dark arena. During this time, observers kept a tally of any mating behaviors or aggressive/competitive behaviors. This includes pursuing the female to mate, or engaging in male-male competition. Examples of female persuasion behavior included actively following the female, mounting, or chirping. Examples of male-male competitive behaviors included moving pinchers, actively moving towards the other male in the arena, and also chirping. If either male began to pursue the female within the allotted time period, the time of first movement towards the female was also written down. After the observation time was completed, all three crickets from each tank were placed back into their original holding container to eliminate re-using a cricket in the same arena and to assure trials were completed independently of one another. This procedure was repeated 5 times for each type of environment.
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