Author: Sabrina Imbler / Source: Atlas Obscura
After a volcano erupts, lava crickets are the first on the scene. These insects make their home on the brittle surfaces of cooled lava flows that host no other multicellular life. Lava crickets survive by eating decaying plants swept in by the wind and by drinking sea foam, which contains a protein-like compound similar to what is found in egg whites.
By the time green tufts of plants finally begin to sprout in the volcanic rock, the crickets have already moved on—in search of something more barren. In other words, lava crickets are extremely metal pioneers.The dire lifestyle of the lava cricket—Caconemobius fori, or ‘ūhini nēnē pele in Hawaiian—remains a mystery to entomologists, writes Michael Price in a new feature for Science. Local Hawaiians had long been aware of the crickets’ sudden, post-volcanic presence, but they didn’t appear in scientific journals until 1978, four years after a team from Honolulu’s Bishop Museum spotted the insects while exploring Kilauea’s lava fields.
With such a short tenure in a brutal environment, the crickets haven’t…
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