The chirp of the cricket may soon be used to monitor their species diversity.
- Scientists are establishing an acoustic signal library that can help track the diversity of these insects.
- Morphology-based traditional taxonomy has gone a long way to recognise and establish species diversity. But it is often not sufficient in delimiting cryptic species– a group of two or more morphologically indistinguishable species (hidden under one species) or individuals of the same species expressing diverse morphological features (which are often classified into multiple species).
- Therefore, identification solely based on morphological features leads to underestimation or overestimation of species diversity.
- In order to overcome this challenge, Dr. Ranjana Jaiswara, a Department of Science and Technology (DST) Inspire Faculty Fellow at the Department of Zoology, Panjab University, is working to establish a field crickets acoustic-signal library which can be used as a non-invasive tool in species diversity estimation and monitoring.
- The library will be a digital ones and can be used through mobile phone application for automated species recognition and discovery as well as documentation of new species of crickets from India.
(Source: PIB)
