[sharpshooter insect calls] thump, rrrrrm
A vineyard might seem like a serene place.
[calls] prrr, oooh, ooh, ooh
But on its leaves and stems these insects
are hitting a frenzied dating scene.
[calls] thump, prrr
[calls] rrrm, thump
[responds] ooh, ooh, ooh
[calls] rrm, rrm, rrm
When it’s time for these blue-green sharpshooters to look for a mate, they shake their abdomens
and send vibrations traveling through the vines.
[calls] thump, rrm, rm, rm, rm, rm
While they have big eyes, they’re not great for spotting a cutie.
The vibrations are key to finding that special someone.
[calls] prrr, ooh, prr, prr
[calls] prr
This male’s looking for the female he’s been chatting up.
[calls] prroooh
-You up?
[calls] oooh
-Oh hey.
Maybe … maybe not.
[calls] prrooh
All sharpshooters, like this glassy-winged one ...
feed constantly. They pierce plants
with their stylet, sucking out the watery sap.
To get the nutrients they need
sharpshooters drink up to
300 times their bodyweight in sap each day.
They shoot out the excess liquid, known as “insect honeydew.”
If you were sitting nearby you might feel a refreshing mist.
The problem is that while they gorge themselves
sharpshooters unintentionally inject a bacterium
into the vine that eventually kills the plant.
Protecting California’s grapevines from this infection costs more than 100 million
dollars a year.
So entomologist Rodrigo Krugner and his team at the U.S. Department of Agriculture
are working on a solution. He uses lasers to pick up the insects’ vibrations
and turn them into sounds we can hear.
[calls] prrooh, thump, thump, thump
This male glassy-winged sharpshooter
puts himself out there.
[calls] thump, rrrrrm
This polka-dotted female is into him.
[calls] woooo
But they can’t quite get into the right position
He tries his luck with another female.
[calls] thump, rrrrrm
But she gives him the leg lift.
That's sharpshooter for “no, thanks.”
She’s actually deferring to the other female.
[calls] woooo
Krugner found that the female that calls the longest and the strongest becomes dominant …
[calls offscreen] rrrrm
[calls] woooo
...and makes the other females quiet down.
She mates first. The others have to wait.
So Krugner got an idea. He recorded and
played back the call of a dominant female.
[calls] woooo
[sharpshooter call recording] woooo
Using an electromagnetic shaker hanging on a trellis, he broadcast her vibrations
in the vineyard and got the sharpshooters to stop mating.
[call recording] woooo
This is just a prototype. Its ultimate goal is to mess with the insects’ game.
[calls] prrr
[calls] brrrr
But for now, sharpshooters are still hooking up.