Cricket calling communities as an indicator of the invasive ant Wasmannia auropunctata in an insular biodiversity hotspot A. Gasc, J. Anso, J. Sueur, Herve Jourdan, L. Desutter-Grandcolas To cite this version: A. Gasc, J. Anso, J. Sueur, Herve Jourdan, L. Desutter-Grandcolas. Cricket calling communities as an indicator of the invasive ant Wasmannia auropunctata in an insular biodiversity hotspot. Biological Invasions, Springer Verlag, 2018, 20 (5), pp.1099-1111. 10.1007/s10530-017-1612-0. hal-01704447 HAL Id: hal-01704447 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01704447 Submitted on 21 May 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Biol Invasions DOI 10.1007/s10530-017-1612-0 ORIGINAL PAPER Cricket calling communities as an indicator of the invasive ant Wasmannia auropunctata in an insular biodiversity hotspot A. Gasc . J. Anso . J. Sueur . H. Jourdan . L. Desutter-Grandcolas Received: 16 May 2017 / Accepted: 2 November 2017 Ó Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2017 Abstract Invasive species are a major concern for through their species-specific calls. Here, we evalu- the maintenance of ecosystem services and biodiver- ated the use of an acoustic community of crickets as an sity but are difficult to mitigate. Upstream solutions to indicator of the presence of W. auropunctata in New prevent their impact, including their detection, are Caledonia. We evaluated the dominance of the needed. Wasmannia auropunctata, an invasive ant crickets in the soundscape, describe the cricket living in vagile supercolonies, is especially hard to community structure and diversity along a shrubland track and is a major threat for tropical ecosystems and to forest gradient, characterize these cricket commu- local animal communities. As part of such tropical nities structure and diversity in the light of ongoing communities, crickets are sensitive to ecological invasion by W. auropunctata , and identify cricket conditions, easy to collect, detectable and identifiable species’ indicators of the invasion. Acoustic record- ings collected on 24 sites were described using human- listening and spectrographic visualization. The results Electronic supplementary material The online version of demonstrated a clear dominance of the cricket group in this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-017-1612-0) con- tains supplementary material, which is available to authorized the New Caledonian nocturnal soundscapes. Each users. habitat harbored a specific acoustic cricket community related to specific environmental attributes including & A. Gasc ( ) vegetation height, daily variation of humidity and Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Center for Global Soundscapes, Purdue University, 203 South Martin temperature. The presence of W. auropunctata was Jischke Drive, B066 Mann Hall, West Lafayette, significantly associated with a lower cricket acoustic IN 47907, USA activity and species richness at night. Of the 19 species e-mail: [email protected] detected, four nocturnal species were identified as J. Anso Á H. Jourdan indicator of non-invaded forests and preforests. This Institut Me´diterrane´en de Biodiversite´ et d’E ´ cologie work supports the use of acoustic as an alternative marine et continentale (IMBE), UMR 7263 CNRS, IRD method to detect invasion. 237, Centre IRD Noume´a, Aix-Marseille Universite´, Avignon Universite´, BP A5, 98848 Noume´a Cedex, Nouvelle-Cale´donie Keywords Bioindicator Á Acoustic community Á Invasive species Á Soundscape Á Ecoacoustics A. Gasc Á J. Sueur Á L. Desutter-Grandcolas Institut de Syste´matique, Evolution, Biodiversite´ (ISEB), UMR 7205 CNRS, MNHN, UMPC, EPHE, Muse´um national d’Histoire naturelle, Sorbonne Universite´s, 57 rue Cuvier, CP 50, 75005 Paris Cedex 05, France 123 A. Gasc et al. Introduction Among soniferous insects, crickets (Orthoptera, Grylloidea) possess several of the required qualities to Biological invasion is one of the major drivers of potentially be bioacoustic indicators in the tropics: (1) ongoing global environmental change (Vitousek et al. crickets are widely distributed in the tropics with 1996; Simberloff et al. 2013). Because negative reasonably high overall abundance and wide local impacts of invasive alien species on ecosystem diversity (Otte and Alexander 1983; Otte 1994; services, community structure, and biodiversity are Desutter-Grandcolas et al. 2016), (2) many cricket important and difficult to mitigate, upstream solutions species rely on acoustic signals to attract a mate, and to prevent impact of invasive species are needed their calls are most often species-specific and easy to (Hulme 2006; Ehrenfeld 2010; Simberloff et al. 2013). identify (Riede 1997; Diwakar and Balakrishnan Among invasive species, ants receive specific atten- 2007), (3) convincing evidence placed crickets as tion due to their demonstrated association with sensitive to environmental changes, including ecolog- ecosystem function and biodiversity loss (Lach and ical succession (Desutter-Grandcolas 1992; Szinwel- Hooper-Bui 2010). Invasion success of this group ski et al. 2012) and biological invasion (LaPolla et al. resides in their low intra-species aggression (unicolo- 2000). In this context, the survey of the acoustic niality), high inter-species aggression, mutualism community of crickets could represent a fast and behavior, and high competition for local resources efficient approach for habitat surveys in general and with native species (Holway 1998; Holway et al. for the detection of invasive species in particular. 2002). Environmental managers need efficient tools to To test this hypothesis, we conducted an acoustic detect their presence, evaluate their impacts, and track survey of the abundant, diverse and well-described their spread to initiate management action as early as cricket communities in New Caledonia (Anso 2016; possible (Hulme 2006). In this context, invasive ants Anso et al. 2016b). New Caledonia is a Pacific that are small and live in mobile colonies are archipelago, considered a major biodiversity hotspot especially hard to track. that is threatened by human activity and invasive Recent advances in ecoacoustics contributed to the species (Myers et al. 2000). Among invasive ants, idea of using sound from the activity of an animal Wasmannia auropunctata (Roger 1863) appears as community as an indicator of environmental condi- one of the ‘‘six most widespread, abundant, and tions or ecological changes (Pijanowski et al. 2011; damaging invasive ants’’ in the world (Holway et al. Sueur and Farina 2015). In both terrestrial and aquatic 2002) and one of the ‘‘100 world’s worst invasive environments, many animal species rely on acoustic species’’ (Lowe et al. 2000). This species spreads and signals to interact. Species acoustically active in a impacts biodiversity in all New Caledonian habitats given space and at a specific time constitute an (Jourdan et al. 2001; Le Breton et al. 2003; Berman acoustic community contributing to the soundscape. et al. 2013). For this survey, we selected 24 sites in the The term soundscape here is defined as the ‘‘physical south of the main island according to two critical extent of acoustic signals and the spectral range of ecological conditions: the habitat type and the pres- signal frequencies associated with an ecosystem’s ence W. auropunctata . We passively recorded and biophysical processes’’ following Qi et al. ( 2008). analyzed soundscapes from these sites to evaluate the Acoustics of animal communities can reflect their dominance of the cricket group in the overall acoustic diversity, composition and dynamics and be indicative community, described the structure and diversity of of environmental trends (Gasc et al. 2013; Lellouch the calling cricket communities in three dominant et al. 2014; Towsey et al. 2014). Several studies have habitats, and characterized the response of cricket linked the acoustic profile of animal communities with calling communities to the ongoing invasion by W. habitat characteristics and/or human disturbances auropunctata on the cricket calling communities. (Sueur et al. 2008; Joo et al. 2011; Tucker et al. 2014). Based on these promising results, the direct influence of biological invasion on acoustic commu- nities in the natural environment needs to be investi- gated (Boelman et al. 2007). 123 Cricket calling communities as an indicator of the invasive ant Wasmannia auropunctata Methods to discard those (n = 3 056) containing anthropogenic noise (e.g. human voices), rain and/or wind. Study sites Calling identification and count Selected sites were on similar metalliferous soil in southern New Caledonia, hosting three main habitat For each site, we selected 120 recordings, correspond- types following a vegetation gradient: ‘‘forest’’, ‘‘pre- ing to the beginning of every hour—from 07:00 to forest’’ and ‘‘shrubland’’ (Online Resource 1). We 16:00 h and from 19:00 to 04:00 h—for 6 days selected invaded and non-invaded sites leading to a randomly selected. We deliberately discarded dusk total of six modalities (3 habitat