First Report of the Mating Behavior of a Species of Frog-Biting Midge (Diptera: Corethrellidae)

Abstract

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Light and noise pollution interact to disrupt interspecific interactions

“…The reduced activity of the midges under high light levels made them less likely to find a frog host and is consistent with their lack of activity during the day in captivity and the wild. While it is expected that their host seeking behavior is timed with those hours in which the frogs are actively calling at night, the midges concentrate all their activities to the night hours becoming almost immobile when light intensity increases (de Silva and Bernal ). Ultimately, reduced activity at high light levels might be a strategy to minimize predation risk.…”

“…Given the importance of nighttime conditions and the intricacies of frog calls to the mating success of both túngara frogs and frog‐biting midges, we hypothesized that noise and light pollution would interfere with these communication networks reducing the abundance of both species. Because frog‐biting midges are active under laboratory conditions only at low light intensities (de Silva and Bernal ), and not present during the day in the wild (X. E. Bernal and T. A. McMahon, personal observation ), we predicted that light pollution would be detrimental to them. However, because the midges find the vicinity of their host using mostly the call of the frog, we predicted that there would be a noise‐by‐light interaction and that noise pollution might be even more detrimental than light pollution.…”