Rivers and roads, silence and songs: female crickets respond similarly to conspecific male song in natural and anthropogenic soundscapes

Many studies have demonstrated that anthropogenic noise affects animals’ auditory perception of salient stimuli. Few have tested whether these effects are different from those experienced in nature. We tested the ability of female field crickets, Teleogryllus oceanicus, to locate a speaker playing conspecific male song in four background acoustic conditions: silence, road noise, river noise, and heterospecific song. We recorded how successful crickets were in reaching the correct speaker in each condition, as well as varying other metrics for the ones that were successful, such as speed, path length and latency to start. Crickets paused more frequently during river noise and heterospecific song treatments compared to silence or road noise. We also recorded auditory interneuron (AN2) activity under the first three background conditions to construct and compare condition-specific audiograms and AN2 response to conspecific song. We examined the the thresholds of response for AN2 at differe..., , # Rivers and roads, silence and songs: female crickets respond similarly to conspecific male song in natural and anthropogenic soundscapes

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.b5mkkwhqx](10.5061/dryad.b5mkkwhqx)

## Description of the data and file structure

*Teleogryllus oceanicus* crickets were placed in the center of a circular arena surrounded by speakers. A single focal speaker located on the edge of the arena played the song of a male cricket while additional speakers located around the arena played one of four background noise conditions (silence, traffic noise, river noise, or the song of another cricket species). Crickets were recorded via a ceiling mounted security camera and scored on whether they reached the correct speaker playing male song. Those that did were then scored on their speed, latency to leave the central shelter, distance they travelled, and number of times they paused. 

A subset of these crickets were then selected for neural trials. Crickets were pinned and their c..., , **Changes after Jun 3, 2025:** 

Replaced all the R scripts and added new ones based on reviewers feedback. Code has been cleaned up for clarity as well. 

* T.oceanicus_river_vs_traffic_JEB.R new file that contains all the scripts for the behavioural analysis, and figures.
* TO_spike_analysis_River_comparison.R contains the scripts for the AN2 analysis, and figures
* TO_AN1_amplitude_measurements_Erik_2025.R contains the scripts for measuring the AN1 spikes using the audio files with AN2 spikes removed. 
* TO_AN1_amplitude_analysis_2025.R contains the scripts for the AN1 analysis and figures.