Skip to main content
Dryad

Anthropogenic light and noise affect the life histories of female Gryllus veletis field crickets

Data files

Mar 14, 2022 version files 11.68 KB

Abstract

Adaptive plasticity often offsets the negative effects of rapid environmental change. However, anthropogenic stressors like noise and artificial light at night (ALAN) are often unlike those environments experienced ancestrally, making the resulting responses of individuals potentially maladaptive or less predictable. Further uncertainty stems from few studies exploring how the two anthropogenic stressors may interact to influence individual responses. Here we reared female Gryllus veletis field crickets in traffic noise, ALAN, both, or neither to assess how each environment impacted their development, mating behaviors, and reproductive output. We found modest to no effect of anthropogenic stressors on development time or adult size, but pronounced effects on adult behaviors. Females reared in noise in any capacity were more responsive to advertising males and mated with them faster, and females reared in any anthropogenic stressor retained spermatophores longer. More significantly, any anthropogenic stressor reduced the lifetime fitness of females through reduced oviposition, hatching success, both, or reduced offspring size at hatching. However, we did not find decreased fitness of females reared with both anthropogenic stressors relative to those reared with just one. Our results highlight how novel anthropogenic stressors may impact populations, but whether individuals can adapt may depend on an interplay between development, mating behaviors, and reproductive output.