Late summer and early fall is "cricket season" in north Texas. Large numbers of adult crickets aggregate in places that are well lit at night, such as front porches, gas stations, grocery stores, college campuses, K-Marts, and shopping malls. These individuals are attracted to the bright lights, and probably do not achieve much reproductive success from this behavior. More typical behavior is for males to dig a burrow within a small territory, and use the burrow as an amplifier for an "advertisement call". This is an acoustic signal to neighboring males that there is a territory owner present, and to females that a male with a burrow would like to mate. Females are attracted to calling males, and approach the territory and burrow. Presumably the female assesses the quality of the territory and the suitability of the burrow for egg-laying before "agreeing" to mate with the territory holder. After mating the female lays eggs in the male's burrow, where they are protected from predators. The male continues calling to attract additional females.

There are two alternative mating tactics in male field crickets. The primary strategy is described above, namely calling from a burrow to attract females, who mate and then lay eggs in the burrow. The alternative is to not call, but instead to wait silently around the margins of a calling male's territory. These "satellite males" may intercept approaching females are achieve some matings in that way, but frequently they simply wait and eventually take over the calling male's territory and burrow, and then begin calling themselves. Calling versus waiting is a balance of strategies based on costs and benefits of each strategy. The obvious benefit of calling is that a male attracts females and gets to mate; an obvious cost to not calling is that a male doesn't attract females and get to mate. The cost of calling comes from attracting parasitoid flies (of the Family Tachinidae), which lay eggs on calling males. The fly larvae hatch and bore into the body of the male cricket, feeding on the internal organs and eventually killing the host. At that point, a non-calling satellite male may then move into the deceased male's former territory. The benefit of not calling, thus, is that a male avoids parasitism by the fly.

What determines the relative costs and benefits of these two strategies? One obvious determinant is the density of flies in the habitat. A habitat with relatively few flies would be safe for calling, and most if not all male crickets would pursue that strategy. A habitat with lots of flies, in contrast, would mitigate against calling. But if few males call, then few males mate, and those individuals would have much greater RS than non-callers. Another determining factor is the density of females in the habitat. In a habitat with many females, calling males could potentially mate often enough before attracting a fly to offset the substantial cost of being parasitized. In contrast, in a habitat with few females, males would have to call longer to mate the same number of times, so other things being equal, habitats with few females should select against calling (assuming there are flies in the habitat).

In summary, crickets demonstrate that both the biotic and the social environments are important selection pressures in the evolution of behavior, and that individuals may balance survival and reproduction so that maximal reproductive success is achieved. In some situations this may mean favoring survival over reproduction, but in other situations individuals may sacrifice survival in order to achieve reproduction.