Singing Insects of North America (SINA)
The primary goal of this website is to help users identify all species of crickets and katydids from North America north of Mexico and all species of the genus Ammopelmatus Jerusalem crickets from North America and Mexico.. The males of most species crickets and katydids make loud, persistent calls that attract sexually ready, conspecific females. Jerusalem crickets use call drumming by males and females to call conspecific mates. Because the songs and drumming calls are loud and species specific they are usually an easy means of identifying the caller. They also facilitate field and laboratory studies of many sorts.
Secondary goals of this site are to attract amateur and professional biologists to the study of singing insects and to provide them helpful information and access to relevant literature.
A revision of the Jerusalem crickets, genus
Ammopelmatus (Weissman et al. 2026) was published in
Zootaxa in March 2026. 105 new species were described and 12 previously named taxa were recognized as valid.
A. californicus was confirmed as a junior synonym of
A. longispinus and
A. monahansensis was synonymized under
A. mescaleroensis. These species will be added to SINA. A new button for Jerusalem Crickets has been added to the top of SINA's
home page, following the buttons for Crickets and Katydids. This button links to an early draft of the
Ammopelmatus genus page. And an image of a Jerusalem cricket,
A. etiwanda, with text that links to the
Checklist of Jerusalem Crickets, has been positioned under the images representing crickets and katydids. [
tmy 9 September 2026].
For each
Aglaothorax species, two pages have been added, one showing images of type specimens and the other showing defining characteristics. I am still in the process of adding text to these pages and, for the identification pages, I am adding arrows to the photographs to point out the relevant parts. Plates for the
Agloathorax key to species have been added to SINA with links from the key on the genus page. Figures for the key are in preparation. [
tmy 28 August 2026]
Information about song description, identification, range, habitat, season, name derivation, and remarks have been added to the
Aglathorax species pages. There is now a
genus page for
Aglaothorax which, at present, only has a key to the species. The key has many plates and figures associated with it; I am in the process of preparing and adding the plates and figures to SINA and creating links to them on the key. [
tmy 12 May 2026]
A revision of the shield-backed katydid genus
Aglaothorax (Cole et al. 2025) was published in
Zootaxa in July 2025. Five
Aglaothorax species already on SINA were redescribed. Twelve new species have been added to the genus, eight subspecies were promoted to species rank, and three subspecies were reclassified as junior subjective synonyms. All
Aglaothorax species are now on SINA and their pages are under construction. All species are on the
katydid checklist with links to their respective species pages. [
tmy 18 January 2026]
The map pages for SINA's species are being updated to include higher resolution maps, summaries of distribution, and lists of states and counties for the United States and regions and localities for Canada. The
SINA Map Updates page lists which map pages are completed and which are in progress. [
tmy 1 May 2026]
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