Publisher's Synopsis
The Tettigoniidae is the only general treatment of the katydids and bushcrickets of the world, comprising 18 chapters by renowned scientists. It opens with a discussion of the defensive behaviour of katydids in New World tropical rainforests and leads from accounts of their reproductive behaviour to their evolutionary origin. Their most significant feature is acoustic behaviour in courtship. This aspect has allowed scientists to explore the evolution of insect communication as well as details of the physiological processes of sound production and its reception. The family Tettigoniidae displays an extraordinary diversity of form permitting an abundance of methods of arriving at a classification. The final chapters present the first comprehensive modern classification of one of the best known and widespread subfamilies, the Tettigoniinae, where a cladistic and phenetic analysis are compared and the results discussed.
