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Cricket calling communities as an indicator of the invasive ant Wasmannia auropunctata in an insular biodiversity hotspot

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Abstract

Invasive species are a major concern for the maintenance of ecosystem services and biodiversity but are difficult to mitigate. Upstream solutions to prevent their impact, including their detection, are needed. Wasmannia auropunctata, an invasive ant living in vagile supercolonies, is especially hard to track and is a major threat for tropical ecosystems and local animal communities. As part of such tropical communities, crickets are sensitive to ecological conditions, easy to collect, detectable and identifiable through their species-specific calls. Here, we evaluated the use of an acoustic community of crickets as an indicator of the presence of W. auropunctata in New Caledonia. We evaluated the dominance of the crickets in the soundscape, describe the cricket community structure and diversity along a shrubland to forest gradient, characterize these cricket communities structure and diversity in the light of ongoing invasion by W. auropunctata, and identify cricket species’ indicators of the invasion. Acoustic recordings collected on 24 sites were described using human-listening and spectrographic visualization. The results demonstrated a clear dominance of the cricket group in the New Caledonian nocturnal soundscapes. Each habitat harbored a specific acoustic cricket community related to specific environmental attributes including vegetation height, daily variation of humidity and temperature. The presence of W. auropunctata was significantly associated with a lower cricket acoustic activity and species richness at night. Of the 19 species detected, four nocturnal species were identified as indicator of non-invaded forests and preforests. This work supports the use of acoustic as an alternative method to detect invasion.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank F. Rigault (IRD IMBE à Nouméa) and J-F. Julien (MNHN) who provided help for field work and C. Desjonquères for her advice regarding GLMMs. We are grateful for the work of several undergraduate students, M. Aubert, J. Lansiaux, and L. Payandi. We are also grateful to E. Vidal (IRD Noumea) and B. C. Pijanowski (Purdue University) for logistical and financial support. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments. We would like to thank B. C. Pijanowski and G. Pignotti for their helpful comments to the manuscript. We thank the Province Sud Environment Office (DENV) for collecting permits (Decree 2155-2013/ARR/DENV).

Funding

This study was partly funded by a Ph.D. Grant, ‘Bourse d’encouragement à la recherche universitaire’, attributed to J. Anso by the Government of New Caledonia. This Ph.D. and associated field work was also supported by a funding attributed to J. Anso and H. Jourdan by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) through the ERA-Net BiodivERsA Project (FFII, JE 288/7-1). The bioacoustic study was supported by a Grant from the Grand Observatoire du Pacifique Sud: AAP GOPS 2013/‘Bioacoustique des grillons de Nouvelle-Calédonie’. The laboratory procedures were realized through the three research programs: Action Transversale du Muséum (ATM) ‘Biodiversité actuelle et fossile. Crises, stress, restaurations et panchronisme: le message systématique’, ATM ‘Barcode’ and the Labex BCDIV (Diversités biologiques et culturelles) ‘A diachronic study of biodiversity and a test of biogeographic scenarios in New Caledonia as based on field inventories of fossil and present-day insects’. The field work procedure was partly realized through the program: Action Transversale du Muséum (ATM) ‘Formes possibles – Formes réalisées’. The analyses and redaction of the manuscript were partly funded by NSF RCN (#1114945), Purdue University’s Center for the Environment, Wright Forestry Fund of the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University, and the College of Agriculture at Purdue University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Center for Global Soundscapes, Purdue University, 203 South Martin Jischke Drive, B066 Mann Hall, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA

    A. Gasc

  2. Institut Méditerranéen de Biodiversité et d’Écologie marine et continentale (IMBE), UMR 7263 CNRS, IRD 237, Centre IRD Nouméa, Aix-Marseille Université, Avignon Université, BP A5, 98848, Nouméa Cedex, Nouvelle-Calédonie

    J. Anso & H. Jourdan

  3. Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité (ISEB), UMR 7205 CNRS, MNHN, UMPC, EPHE, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Sorbonne Universités, 57 rue Cuvier, CP 50, 75005, Paris Cedex 05, France

    A. Gasc, J. Sueur & L. Desutter-Grandcolas

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  1. A. Gasc
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Correspondence to A. Gasc.

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Gasc, A., Anso, J., Sueur, J. et al. Cricket calling communities as an indicator of the invasive ant Wasmannia auropunctata in an insular biodiversity hotspot. Biol Invasions 20, 1099–1111 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-017-1612-0

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