Shy lovers, take heart: A new UC Davis study of crickets' spring mating songs contradicts the notion that faint hearts don't win fair maidens. Researchers know that male field crickets attract mates by rubbing their wings together, and that cricket females prefer the males with the longest calls. But prolonged calling also may help a hungry predator home in on the caller, turning the suitor into supper. What's a lovelorn cricket to do? UC Davis research biologist Ann Hedrick, who has studied cricket behavior for 15 years, says he simply has to be a little more cautious than the next guy. In a recent series of experiments with both laboratory-bred and wild-caught crickets, Hedrick tested how long the creatures took to emerge from shelter in new environments and to resume calling after being threatened. Her results showed that the most long-winded crickets were also the most cautious; they took twice as long as short singers to venture outside and more than 10 times as long to resume calling. The research, which was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, recently appeared in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. The findings may suggest that some changes are needed in current evolutionary models, Hedrick said. "The models assume that, in general, males with more conspicuous displays have a greater cost of predation. These results suggest that this might not be so because those males are being cautious -- they're behaviorally compensating for their conspicuous behavior."