Acoustic repertoire of the sword-tail cricket Cranistus colliurides Stål, 1861 (Orthoptera: Grylloidea, Trigonidiidae: Phylloscyrtini)

Elliott Centeno, Eduardo S. Calixto & Edison Zefa (2021). Acoustic repertoire of the sword-tail cricket Cranistus colliurides Stål, 1861 (Orthoptera: Grylloidea, Trigonidiidae: Phylloscyrtini) . Bioacoustics, Volume 30 (6): 652 -661
Abstract: 

Crickets stand out for the production of acoustic signals used in intraspecific communication, which is present in the reproductive and agonistic behaviour of species. The most common repertoire includes the calling, courtship and agonistic songs, the calling song being the most studied due to its application in the species recognition. We describe for the first time the acoustic repertoire of a cricket from the Phylloscyrtini tribe, namely Cranistus colliurides, comparing its different song parameters. The individuals were collected during the reproductive phase, and kept individually in laboratory until trials between male/female and male/male were performed to obtain the acoustic signals. We found that the repertoire of this species is composed of four distinct types of songs. The calling, courtship and agonistic songs are structurally similar, being formed by a long trill, but marked with differences in dominant frequency, wave per pulse, pulse duration and pulse rate. In contrast, the post-copulatory song is completely different from the other songs in the repertoire, being composed of brief chirps and showing a difference in all the analysed parameters. The acoustic repertoire described shows a complex communication system of a neotropical cricket, revealing how much information we still do not know about these insects.

Keywords: 

Insect, behaviour, communication, bioacoustics, songs

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