Reduction in cricket (Orthoptera: Ensifera) populations along a gradient of sulphur dioxide from mining emissions in northern Australia

Abstract

The impact of SO2 dry deposition from mining emissions on cricket abundance, diversity and composition was investigated at Mount Isa in the semiarid tropics of northern Australia. Seventy-one sites were sampled, stratified at two levels: sulphur deposition zones (high, medium, low, and background zones) and habitat (rocky ridge, rocky plain and alluvial plain). The three habitats did not support distinctly different cricket assemblages. Crickets responded to SO2 emissions, but impacts were largely restricted to the high-sulphur zone. Generalised linear modelling showed significant reductions in the probability of presence in the high-sulphur zone for the three genera Eurepella, Salmanites and Endacusta , and the subfamily Eneopterinae. In ordination space, the three high-sulphur zone by habitat combinations were clearly separated from all other combinations, and vector fitting of environmental variables showed soil SO4 to be a primary correlative factor of this separation. Crickets are sensitive to SO2 emissions and they appear to be a good indicator group in this context.