ABSTRACT

Urbanisation impacts biodiversity tremendously, but a few species can still tolerate the harsh conditions of urban habitats. Studies regarding the impact of urbanisation on the soundscape and acoustic behaviours of sound-producing animals tend to overlook invertebrates, including the crickets. Almost nothing is known about their acoustic community in the urban environment, especially for Southeast Asia where rapid urbanisation is widespread. Grass verges in Singapore – characterised by complex mosaics of land-use types – were sampled as a microcosmic representation of the urban environment to address these questions: (i) What is the acoustic community of crickets in the urban environment? (ii) How do co-occurring species partition their calls? (iii) How do the call properties vary with environmental conditions and individuals? The calling songs of 10 species were recorded and they generally have distinct call signatures in both the time and frequency domains. The acoustic community was dominated by Polionemobius taprobanensis and Gryllodes sigillatus. They also showed repeatabilites in their call properties with static properties being more repeatable than dynamic properties, but these call properties were not associated with environmental variables. The presence of these crickets is relevant for a biophilic city as they represent what most urban dwelling humans could frequently hear.

摘要

城市化极大地影响了生物多样性，但少数物种仍然可以忍受城市栖息地的恶劣条件。关于城市化对发声动物的声景和声学行为的影响的研究往往忽视无脊椎动物，包括蟋蟀。他们在城市环境中的声学社区几乎一无所知，尤其是在快速城市化普遍存在的东南亚。新加坡的草地——以土地利用类型的复杂镶嵌为特征——被采样作为城市环境的微观代表，以解决以下问题：(i) 城市环境中蟋蟀的声学群落是什么？(ii) 共生物种如何划分它们的叫声？(iii) 通话属性如何随环境条件和个人而变化？记录了 10 个物种的鸣叫，它们在时域和频域上通常具有明显的呼叫特征。声学社区由Polionemobiustaprobanensis和Gryllodes sigillatus。他们还在调用属性中显示了可重复性，静态属性比动态属性更可重复，但这些调用属性与环境变量无关。这些蟋蟀的存在与亲生物城市有关，因为它们代表了大多数城市居民经常听到的声音。