ABS 2024
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No room to vibe: Vibrational acoustic niches constrain insect diversity
Leah Gath1, Em Miller1, Hebron Bekele1, Jake Woods4, Inaya Smith1, Jared Colbert2, Kim Medley3, Kasey Fowler-Finn1. 1Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, MO, United States; 2Harris-Stowe State University, Saint Louis, MO, United States; 3Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, MO, United States; 4University of Southern Florida, Tampa, FL, United States

Global declines in insect diversity call for a better understanding of the factors shaping insect communities. Here, we investigate the vibrational acoustic niche, a potentially important factor that could constrain local insect diversity. Over 93% of acoustic insects use substrate-borne vibrations to communicate through available plant stems and leaves. Thus, the transmission properties of plants could limit the available vibrational niche space by constraining which signals transmit well, and therefore which insect species can use them. To test whether vibrational signals differ across prairie plants of different structural types, we first developed equipment for high throughput recording of vibrational signals, then recorded hundreds of hours of vibrational signals from four plant types. We analyzed the resulting sound files to identify the number of unique signals on each plant and to categorize the signals into structural signal types. We tested whether signal diversity and signal type varied across the plant types. We discuss how our research will aid in understanding the potential impacts of a relatively unexplored niche concept on local assemblages of insect communities.