5. Good Vibrations-Treehoppers

The Insect Singers sound their last with a hidden world of astonishing dynamic range. All on the self-contained world of a plant stem. 5. Good Vibrations-Treehoppers. Through the science of biotremology, Rex Cocroft and a handful of others have been revealing the extraordinarily sonorous world of vibrational communication by the sometimes bizarre, often beautiful branch of Cicadmorpha - the Treehoppers. Tiny, yet able to resonate through a blade of grass-transforming it into a green amplifier or a leaf or plant stem as soon as they hatch out from the egg. Whole societies existing on a single plant communicating their mating calls & warnings and collectively making decisions through their ability to sound every part of their body. Rex Cocroft, now at the University of Missouri, had harboured musical dreams as a student before returning to his first love of the natural world. His entry into this little-studied world came as an extraordinary revelation.
"It was music, it was a sound I had never heard before. Just about everything I heard was completely new, not just not heard by me but really anybody. The truth is, the world is much richer & more beautiful than we ever imagined because the world created by singing insects within our plants is so beautiful and a deep mystery."

As told to producer Mark Burman
All Treehopper recordings courtesy of Rex Cocroft
Music excerpts - Tree Hop from Bug Music by David Rothenberg, Buzz-Music in Harmony with Nature-Treehopper by Superfam Membracoidea Collective
A Storyscape Production for Radio 3