Data from: Anthropogenic noise reduces male reproductive investment in an acoustically signaling insect

Rapidly changing environments impose novel selection pressures on
organisms, and sometimes adaptive phenotypic plasticity allows
organisms to survive and reproduce in the face of environmental change.
However, plastic responses can also be maladaptive. In this study, we
investigate whether male reproductive investment responds plastically to
varied experience with traffic noise. We exposed male crickets chronically
to one of three noise treatments from the 2nd-3rdinstar until their
natural death: masking traffic noise (including noise that overlaps in
frequency with the male crickets’ mating calls), non-masking traffic noise
(an identical traffic noise track from which we digitally removed the
frequencies that mask the crickets’ mating call), and silence. We
dissected and weighed their testes and spermatophore molds. Controlling
for body mass, we found that the spermatophore molds of crickets reared in
masking and non-masking noise were 29% and 24% lighter, respectively, than
those of crickets reared in silence There were no differences in body mass
adjusted testes mass among treatments. If spermatophore mold mass is
positively associated with male reproductive output, this reduction in
size could have negative fitness consequences for animals exposed to
traffic noise. We encourage future work to investigate impacts of noise on
reproductive investment in other study systems that are likely sensitive
to anthropogenic noise (e.g., birds, frogs, singing insects).

快速变化的环境会对生物体施加全新的选择压力，而适应性表型可塑性（adaptive phenotypic plasticity）有时可帮助生物体在环境变迁中存活并繁衍后代。不过，表型可塑性响应也可能产生适应不良的后果。本研究旨在探究雄性繁殖投入是否会因接触不同类型的交通噪音而产生表型可塑性响应。我们从二至三龄若虫阶段开始，将雄性蟋蟀长期暴露于三种噪音处理之一，直至其自然死亡：三种处理分别为掩蔽型交通噪音（其频率范围与雄性蟋蟀的求偶鸣唱重叠）、非掩蔽型交通噪音（即对同款交通噪音音频轨道进行数字处理，移除其中会掩蔽蟋蟀鸣唱的频率成分）以及静音环境。我们对其睾丸与精荚囊（spermatophore molds）进行解剖并称重。在控制体重变量后，我们发现：处于掩蔽型与非掩蔽型噪音环境中的蟋蟀，其精荚囊重量分别比静音环境组轻29%与24%。各组间经体重校正后的睾丸重量并无显著差异。若精荚囊重量与雄性繁殖产出呈正相关，那么该重量缩减可能会对暴露于交通噪音中的个体产生不利的适合度后果。我们呼吁未来的研究可针对其他对人为噪音敏感的研究体系（如鸟类、蛙类、鸣虫），探究噪音对其繁殖投入的影响。