Singing Insects of North America (SINA)

Thomas J. Walker, editor Teresa M. Cooper, web master

The primary goal of this Web site is to help users identify all species of crickets and katydids from America north of Mexico and the common species of Florida cicadas. The males of most species in these groups make loud, persistent calls that attract sexually ready, conspecific females. Because the songs are loud and species specific they are usually an easy means of identifying the caller. They also facilitate field and laboratory studies of many sorts.

Secondary goals of this site are to attract amateur and professional biologists to the study of singing insects and to provide them helpful information and access to relevant literature.

In August 2019, an important new section on the Ensifera (crickets and katydids) of the Florida State Collection of Arthropods (FSCA) was added to SINA. FSCA contains most of the Ensifera collected by TJW and associates during their research projects centered in the southeastern U.S. and during collecting and recording trips to major sites in the Caribbean. Of importance to those interested in the songs of crickets and katydids, it provides easy online access to ca. 6460 cuts from the Walker Tape Library that were digitized and archived by Cornell’s Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds (MLNS).

Except for first-time users of SINA, few spend time on the content of SINA's home page. Instead they click directly to either SINA's list of North American crickets or katydids.

Home-page Topics	FSCA Ensifera Topics
Frequently? asked questions [including Copyrights]	Specimens and Songs of FSCA Ensifera
Some features of SINA	Finding specimens of crickets and katydids in FSCA
How to use SINA	Tables from the GrylTett database
Contributing to SINA	Accessing 6460 cricket and katydid songs from SINA's FSCA section
Aids to using SINA	Relevant websites and their interrelations
Sample songs of crickets and katydids	Suggestions for those in need of help regarding the FSCA section of SINA
SINA's origins, 2019 update, and continuation	Features of the rest of SINA that may benefit those primarily interested in the FSCA section

Those who have not used SINA before should be advised that the morphological keys have not been updated to accommodate some of the changes made in the higher classifications of crickets and katydids since the start of SINA in 2001. Those who have an idea of the common or scientific name of the species they wish to identify, should go directly to the list of species of North American crickets or katydids. There they will find direct links to the “species pages” of the 152 species of crickets and 265 species of katydids arranged under their current higher classifications.