CRI, CRI, CRI, CRI

LUIS CALDERN 4A

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IES Ciudad de los Poetas
Lab Report by Luis Caldern

WHAT FACTORS AFFECT THE CHIRP RATE?

RESERCH QUESTION
I have been given six audio files which contain chirps produced by a cricket at
different lengths of time that maybe could be affected by different variables such as
temperature, air humidity, wind or the time of the day in which the files were
recorded. These insects are also known as Gryllus Bimaculatus in the Scientific
environment.
So, we can say that our question is Why do crickets chirp?
VARIABLES
Here what we are going to analyze are the variables that are taking part in our
experiment, that can be classified as:

Temperature [ which is measured in Celsius (C)]

can go from 9C to 24C
Independent
Variable This is the amount energy that can be measure in the
area where this cricket lives.
Humidity of the soil [ which is measured in %]

# of chirps
Dependent This is the data that depends in the temperature as well
Variable as humidity and will be expressed in (Chirps/ minute)

Humidity in this case be considered controlled because

the independent variable is temperature, but it also can
Controlled be the other way around
Variables
Ex: Wind speed, number of crickets nearby, pressure

HYPOTHESIS
At the first moment that we start making this experiment I thought that the chirps
frequency could decrease when the crickets were in a higher altitude because there
is less oxygen and they could be more tired.
Also, another thing that came to my mind was that If I raise the temperature, then the
frequency of chirps will decrease because the heat can make crickets to suffocate.

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MATERIALS
The materials needed for this experiment were simple, we only need a stopwatch and
6 files which contain the chirps produced by different crickets.
PROCEDURE
We start dividing the class in 4 groups to reduce the error at listening to the files
given by the teacher and with a stopwatch we must measure the number of chirps we
listen to. This number can depend in the way we start the timing and at the end.
This procedure was repeated three times for each cricket, to avoid having long
differences of numbers between the groups of students and finally this experiment
was done with male crickets to reduce the error.
The time that was spent was around 13 seconds.
DATA COLLECTING & PROCEDURE
Raw Data: this table must include both data collected of the dependent variable and
controlled variables.

Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Average

(# chirps in 13 (# chirps in 13 (# chirps in 13 # chirps in 13
seconds) seconds) seconds) seconds

Cricket 1 21 21 22 21,333

Cricket 2 22 23 22 22,333

Cricket 3 21 23 21 21,666

Temperature: 9C / Humidity 30%, 68% & 85% Average of the

experiment: 21,77

Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Average

(# chirps in 13 (# chirps in 13 (# chirps in 13 # chirps in 13
seconds) seconds) seconds) seconds

Cricket 1 24 24 24 24

Cricket 2 28 28 29 28,333

Cricket 3 37 35 40 37,333...

Temperature: 14C, 19C & 24C / Humidity 85% Average of the

experiment: 29,88

Sample data:
Average # chirps in 13 seconds, cricket 1: Average value for the 85% humidity

Mean Value in 13 seconds= 21+22+22= 21,333... Mean Value 85%= 37+35+40= 37,33...

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 PROCESED DATA: In this part we must write any type of manipulation that have
been done to the raw data to make it more useful in order to understand the
experiment.

Chirps frequency VS Air temperature

Temperature Chirps frequency

(C) (chirps per minute)
9 99,997

14 110,770

19 130,753

24 172,292

Sample data:
Chirps frequency (chirps per minute) at 9C
Chirps frequency: 21,666 13 21,666 x 60 99,997
99,997
x 60 13x
GRAPHS

200
180
160
Chirps Frquency

140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Temperature (C)

CONCLUSION
This is the result that Ive finally get, at first sight we can see the graph is exponential,
but taking account the first result (9C --- 99,997) as cero, what I mean is situating
that data where the cero is located, because that graph sims like in the middle of
nothing.

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 Forgetting about that little issue, we can also appreciate that the growth is
proportional to the temperature in other words chirps frequency increases
proportional, as more temperature more chirps.
So, my hypothesis of the beginning is refused because I thought that the frequency of
chirps would decrease by temperature and it is the other way around, chirps increase
when there is more temperature.
DISCUSSION
Crickets are insects of cold blood (1) so their metabolism the more heat the cricket
makes more chirps. I thought that this noise was produced with the aim to locate with
the other group of crickets or also because they were hungry, but I didnt find any
information about it.
But what is sure is that the temperature influences their movement (2), when
temperature raises crickets have more energy and sing more quickly and with a high
frequency.
These chirps are produce for a reproductive call (1), therefore only males chirp and
the female crickets listen to them and in the way of the call is produced females
decide where to go. The place where crickets chirp is the entrance of the burrow, so it
must be clean (3).
IMPROVEMENTS
The main improvement that we can do is to reduce the error by repeating the moment
in which we are timing the files. And, if we would have had more time we could listen
to more tracks of different crickets in order to have more points in our graph.
REFERENCES
1 As ligan los grillos, April 30, 2012 (date published) El Mundo.
(http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/04/30/ciencia/1335780553.html)
2 Intrigante Tamao, April 30, 2012 El Mundo.
3 Como y por qu canta el grillo August, 20 2015, Youtube Video.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKzvVt6RVsc)

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