Spectral niche segregation and community organization in a tropical cricket assemblage

In species-rich biomes such as tropical rainforests, the efficiency of intraspecific acoustic communication will strongly depend on the degree of signal overlap. Signal interference deteriorates detection, recognition, and localization of conspecific signals. Thus, the communication space should be partitioned sufficiently to reduce masking interference and to promote intraspecific communication. Here, we studied the community organization of a tropical cricket assemblage with respect to its multidimensional niche axes, such as song frequencies, space (horizontal and vertical), and time, affecting acoustic communication. We used the null model approach to test whether observed community patterns differed from those expected by chance. The assemblage clearly showed partitioning in the spectral domain of calling frequencies of their songs. Furthermore, the range of song frequencies occupied by species is positively correlated with the distance to the average calling frequency of its adjacent neighbors. Thus, species tended to use a greater range of frequency channels for intraspecific communication if the frequency space is available. Our results support the idea that competition for the acoustic communication channel may have resulted in niche segregation along the frequency axes. Concerning the spatiotemporal organization at the community level the spatial (horizontal) distribution appeared to be randomly structured, whereas we found a significant vertical stratification between species. At a temporal scale, the assemblage aggregated their calling activity with an observed niche overlap significantly greater than expected by chance. However, combining the spatial and temporal distribution resulted in low co-occurrence of pairwise species association, consequently reducing chances for masking events.