Stridulation in insects is a common method for production of acoustic signals. Insects being covered in ridged plates led to the present thinking that stridulation arose through locomotion and the scraping of one sclerotized body part over another. Thus is seen a variety of appendages and tagma involved in sound production by this means. The stridulatory organ is defined as a scraper, a single tooth or peg, which is moved back and forth across a file, a ribbed comblike plate, resulting in a sound which is akin to rubbing a fingernail over the edge of a quarter. In the ants the stridulatory organ is predominately located dorsally at the abdominal- petiolar junction, and it is here where we find the file and scraper of the fire ant.

Through our studies we hope to determine the role of stridulation as a means of communication in fire ants. An acoustic laboratory has been developed allowing us to record these quiet but audible chirps. With the use of Canary 1.2lc, developed by the Cornell Laboratories for Ornithology, these recordings can be digitally analyzed for pulse spacing and frequency variation. Our goals include determining when stridulations are used and the related response by sister workers. We will be confirming the only previously reported work on fire ant stridulatory communication by Hickling (1996) in which he documents stridulation in situations of alarm, entrapment, as well as, at a live food source.