“If you look closely at one of the wings, it has a whole bunch of tiny teeth on it. And that rubs against the vein on the other wing—and that causes the whole wing to vibrate, sort of like a drumhead would,” says Dartmouth’s Laurel Symes, PhD ’13, a Neukom Institute fellow in the departments of psychological and brain sciences and biological sciences, in an NPR story about insect communication.

Symes focuses her research on cricket communication. “One of the things that makes them cool,” she says, “is that they have really simple sensory systems—yet they parse this really complex world.”

Listen to the full story, published 8/27/15 by NPR.