Dr. William H. "Bill" Cade is a biologist and a former president of the

University of Lethbridge , mottoeng = ''Let there be light'' , type = Public , established = , academic_affiliations = Universities Canada , endowment = $73 million (2019) , chancellor = Charles Weasel ...

. He researches the role of acoustic signals in

field cricket Field cricket may refer to: * Insect species ** In the British Isles a "field cricket" is the insect species ''Gryllus campestris''; ** in North America it may refer to various species in the genus ''Gryllus''; ** elsewhere, the term may be used for ...

mating behaviour.

Education

Cade completed his BA (1968), MA (1972) and PhD (1976) in Zoology at the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

at Austin. While an undergraduate at Texas, Cade became a member of the Tau chapter of the

Kappa Sigma Kappa Sigma (), commonly known as Kappa Sig, is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at the University of Virginia in 1869. Kappa Sigma is one of the five largest international fraternities with currently 318 active chapters and colo ...

fraternity. For his master's degree he worked with Professor Osmond Breland on unusual aspects of insect sperm cell. Cade's doctoral work was on the evolution of mating behavior in insects and he studied with Professor Daniel Otte.

Research

Cade has done research in evolution of animal behavior, insect reproductive behavior, acoustic signals in cricket, cockroach mating behavior, and parasite-prey coevolution.

Flies and crickets

In 1975, together with his wife,

Elsa Salazar Cade Elsa Salazar Cade (born 1952 in San Antonio, Texas) is a Mexican-American science teacher and entomologist. Elsa received her undergraduate degree in elementary education at the University of Texas at Austin and her master's in public school ad ...

, Cade discovered the parasitic fly ''

Ormia ochracea ''Ormia ochracea'' is a small yellow nocturnal fly in the family Tachinidae. It is notable for its parasitism of crickets and its exceptionally acute directional hearing. The female is attracted to the song of the male cricket and deposits larvae ...

'' is attracted to the song of male crickets. Only female flies are attracted to the song, and they deposit living larvae on and in the vicinity of calling males. The larvae burrow into and eat the cricket who dies in about 7 days when the flies pupate. This was the first example of a natural enemy that locates its host or prey using the mating signal of the host/prey. In late 2006, research by

Marlene Zuk Marlene Zuk (born May 20, 1956) is an American evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist and Ethology, behavioral ecologist. She worked as professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) until she transferred to the Univ ...

revealed the relationship between the cricket and the fly as one of the fastest examples of evolution ever recorded. Pressure from the ''O. ochracea'' has caused the crickets to evolve a silent male with wings that look like female wings. Cade has a long collaboration with

Dan Otte Daniel Otte (born 14 March 1939) is a noted behavior ecologist, a world expert on crickets and grasshoppers and a prominent scientific illustrator. He has made significant contributions to evolutionary biology. He is curator and chairman of th ...

collecting and studying the crickets and

grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshopp ...

s of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

.Alternation calling and spacing patterns in the field cricket Acanthogryllus fortipes (Orthoptera; Gryllidae). William H. Cade and Daniel Otte, Canadian Journal of Zoology. Pages 2916-2920

Other

While Dean of Science at Brock, Bill Cade helped establish the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute.

References

External links

Cricket Research: Being "Eaten Alive for Love" the Cost of Attracting a Mate

Personal website
Evolutionary biologists People from San Antonio University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences alumni University of Lethbridge faculty American entomologists Living people People from Bexar County, Texas Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-zoologist-stub