Photometric decision making during the dawn choruses of cicadas

We report a quantitative study of the onset of dawn choruses of cicadas in several natural habitats. A time-frequency analysis of the acoustical signals is used to define an order parameter for the development of collective singing. The ensemble of recordings reveals that the chorus onset times accurately track the changing sunrise times over the course of many weeks, occurring at a solar elevation of -3.8^{∘}±0.2^{∘}. Despite day-to-day variations in the amplitude of fully developed choruses, the order parameter data collapse to a common sigmoidal curve when scaled by those amplitudes and shifted by the onset time, revealing a characteristic rise time of ≈60 s for a chorus to reach saturation amplitude. The results are used to obtain the cumulative distribution function of singing as a function of ground illumination, from which is obtained a generalized susceptibility which exhibits a narrow peak with a half width of ≈12%. The variance of the order parameter exhibits a similar peak, suggesting that a generalized fluctuation-dissipation theorem holds for this system. A model of decision making under ramps of a control parameter is developed and can achieve a quantitative match to the data. It suggests that sharpness of the susceptibility peak reflects cooperative decision making arising from acoustic communication.