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An old water flea
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of all kinds make their own distinctive kept going for hours, and no two species sounds, but, apart from sun-seeking sound the same, their songs are just as holidaymakers being lulled to sleep different and distinctive as those in birds. every evening by the cicadas, how Like birds, insects almost certainly many of us can recall listening to our sing for a reason, and while not a lot grasshoppers? Some insects can indeed is known on the subject, community make a lot of noise, but in his recordings, communications and calling for a mate Tom Lawrence brings are thought to be involved, and one of the A 450 million year old Crustacean, complete with fossilized soft us right up to and just beyond the edge recordings is of a water beetle sounding parts, has been found in Herefordshire. One of the scientists of our perception. an alarm. The role of sound may even go involved in the discovery, Prof David SiveterBy recording the insects that inhabit from the University Pollardstown Fen, Tom far beyond simple signalling, and it has of Leicester, said that what made the 5mm long fossil so special allows us to listen in to songs that been found that it can cause air bubbles is not that it is a previously un-named species, but that the soft are so unfamiliar that they may as well in the body of a neighbouring insect to parts have been preserved so well that eyes and the antennae can have come from an alien world. Yet, these are the songs that a resonate in sympathy. be made out. whole range of water The recordings were made on The fossil, named Nasunaris flata, belongs to the same group beetles would have been singing long before we came on the Pollardstown Fen in County Kildare, an as water-fleas and shrimps. Their descendants are common In in lakes and oceans, insects scene. area of alkaline marsh, one of the last of todaytune with the and geologists often use the fossils as To create these sounds, insects draw its type in Europe, and therefore of great indicators of past climates. ne of the few lessons I can remember one part of their body against another, ecological interest. It provides an ideal from school is that just showing the like and eyes. Image: habitat for water insects, and its relative Internal image of the fossil by sitting soft parts a bow. Depending on the roughness, still andJ.listening Derek E. G. Briggs, Derek J.