William H. Cade facts for kids

William Henry Cade (born July 5, 1946) is an American-Canadian biologist who served as the president and vice-chancellor of the University of Lethbridge from 2000 to 2010. His research articles deal mainly with entomology, particularly with field crickets.

Education

Cade completed his BA (1968), MA (1972) and PhD (1976) in Zoology at the University of Texas at Austin. While an undergraduate at Texas, Cade became a member of the Tau chapter of the Kappa Sigma fraternity.

Family

Cade's wife, Elsa Salazar Cade (born 1952, San Antonio, Texas), is a Mexican-American science teacher and entomologist. She was selected as one of the top ten science teachers in 1995 by the National Science Teachers Association. For her efforts, she received an award from the University of Lethbridge in 2010 in recognition of her volunteer work.

Research

William Cade has done research in evolution of animal behavior, insect reproductive behavior, acoustic signals in cricket, cockroach mating behavior, and parasite-prey coevolution.

Flies and crickets

With his wife, Cade has done more than 30 years of research on the Texas field cricket, Gryllus texensis. He also had a long collaboration with Dan Otte collecting and studying the crickets and grasshoppers of Africa. In 1975, together with his wife, he discovered the parasitic fly Ormia ochracea is attracted to the song of male crickets. Only female flies are attracted to the song, and they deposit living larvae on and in the vicinity of calling males. The larvae burrow into and eat the cricket who dies in about 7 days when the flies pupate. This was the first example of a natural enemy that locates its host or prey using the mating signal of the host/prey. In 2006, research by Marlene Zuk revealed that pressure from the O. ochracea caused the crickets to evolve a silent male with wings that look like female wings, one of the fastest recorded examples of evolution.

Selected publications

See also

In Spanish: William H. Cade para niños