Tony Robillard

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle · Origines et Évolution

Male crickets belonging to the tribe Lebinthini (Eneopterinae) produce high-frequency, sometimes ultrasonic, calling songs characterized by a dominant harmonic frequency -a phenomenon known as harmonic hopping. While cricket sound production is well understood, the mechanism allowing the dominant frequency to move to the harmonics of the spectrum i...

Anthracites Redtenbacher, 1891 is a genus of Agraeciini with 13 species, of which 11 are found in the Philippines. In the Philippines, seven species were described from Mindanao, the most among other main islands. Based on recently collected material from different parts of Mindanao, we describe two additional new species: Anthracites alatus Tan, B...

A new species of Falcerminthus is described from Zamboanga del Norte in western Mindanao: Falcerminthus hispidus sp. nov. We also present a new locality record for Falcerminthus parvus (Baroga-Barbecho & Robillard, 2020) in the south of Mindanao, i.e., South Cotabato, Lake Sebu; and Lebinthus luae Robillard & Tan, 2013 in Mindanao.

Recent fieldwork in eastern Sabah led to the discovery of new little-known crickets from the subfamily Pteroplistinae (Orthoptera, Grylloidea). Three new species are described: Tembelingiola biaculeata sp. nov. and Tembelingiola kabili sp. nov. from Sepilok; Pteroplistes silam sp. nov. from Mount Silam. Previously, the calling song of only one spec...

Specimens representing three genera of Phaloriinae-Borneloria Gorochov, 2018, Phaloria (Papuloria) Gorochov, 1996 and Trellius (Zatrellius) Gorochov, 1999-were collected from Peninsular and East Malaysia and examined here. We report a new locality record for Borneloria moorei (Chopard, 1940) in Johor, Peninsular Malaysia, the first record of this g...

Background Next-generation sequencing technology can now be used to sequence historical specimens from natural history collections, an approach referred to as museomics. The museomics allows obtaining molecular data from old museum-preserved specimens, a resource of biomolecules largely underexploited despite the fact that these specimens are often...

The Ducetia japonica species group consists of 11 species widely distributed in Asia and Australia. It includes a single species from the Philippines: Ducetia adspersa Brunner von Wattenwyl, 1878. Previously synonymized under Ducetia japonica (Thunberg, 1815), this species was resurrected for its unique stridulatory file. Based on its distinct stri...

Animals often signal in multiple sensory modalities to attract mates, but the level of signaling investment in each modality can differ dramatically between individuals and across species. When functionally overlapping signals are produced in different modalities, their relative use can be influenced by many factors, including differences in signal...

Natural history collections worldwide house billions of specimens, representing one of the most globally important biobanks. In recent years, the advent of next-generation sequenc-ing has significantly reduced the challenges of obtaining considerable genetic information from historical museum specimens. Crickets in the Australian tribe Eurepini Rob...

During a Gryllidae survey in the Southern Cameroonian Plateau, one new species of the genus Gymnogryllus (Orthoptera, Gryllidae, Gryllinae) was discovered and described, namely Gymnogryllus bilongi Um Nyobe & Kekeunou sp. nov. This finding extends the number of species known of this genus in Cameroon at two and proposes a key for African species.

Orthopteran surveys were conducted recently on Mindanao Island of the Philippines. Four species new to science are described here: Mistshenkoana lunotan sp. nov., Mistshenkoana higaonon sp. nov. and Ectatoderus dubius sp. nov. from Misamis Oriental; and Phaloria (Phaloria) rotundata sp. nov. from Agusan del Sur. Based on new collected material, Mad...

Based on material collected during recent fieldwork in eastern Sabah, the males of Nisitrus danum Robillard & Tan and Cardiodactylus variegatus gorochov & Robillard are described for the first time, along with their calling songs. New locality records of N. danum, N. vittatus (haan), Falcerminthus sandakan (Tan et al.), Cardiodactylus borneoe Robil...

Aim: Although New Caledonia is now considered an oceanic island that emerged ca. 60 Ma, a few terrestrial clades are significantly older, raising the question of the origin of these groups. Classically, old lineages on more recent islands are hypothesized to originate through a process of hopping on now-vanished islands (i.e. island-hopping hypothe...

A new genus of Lebinthina (Orthoptera: Gryllidae: Eneopterinae) is erected based on species from Maluka Islands near northern Sulawesi (Indonesia): Platybinthus gen. nov. This new genus currently consists of three species. Platybinthus punctatus (Brunner von Wattenwyl, 1898) gen. et comb. nov. from Halmahera Island is assigned as the type species....

Background Many factors can influence circadian rhythms in animals. For acoustically communicating species, both abiotic cues (such as light and temperature) and biotic cues (such as the activity of other animals), can influence the timing of signalling activity. Here we compare the 24-h singing activity of the cricket Lebinthus luae in the laborat...

A species of scaly cricket is described here: Ornebius lupus sp. nov. from the mangrove forests in Singapore. Ornebius pullus Ingrisch, 2006 is recorded in eastern Sabah for the first time. The calling songs of Cycloptiloides bimaculatus Tan et al., 2021 and Ornebius pullus from Sabah are described. We also revise the diagnosis of Ectatoderus nigro...

Singapore, being land-scarce and lacking in natural resources, has invested immensely in food security. In a new era brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and anthropogenic climate change, global supply chains can be disrupted easily and the ability to produce food locally becomes even more critical. More recently, there has been greater interest...

In India, the cricket subfamily Eneopterinae is represented by two known genera, Xenogryllus Bolívar, 1890 and Indigryllus Robillard & Jaiswara, 2019. The latter was recently described and is known from a single species I. kudremu Robillard & Jaiswara, 2019 from Karnataka, India. The species was known exclusively from its morphological features and...

Mate advertisement signals can vary in their variability, with some signals or signal components being highly stereotyped and others highly variable. One hypothesis for differences in variability suggests that receivers provide stabilizing selection for signal components important for mate recognition, resulting in low variability, while also provi...

From the eastern parts of Sabah, four new species of crickets are described, two of which are from the subfamily Landrevinae and two from the subfamily Podoscirtinae: Duolandrevus (Duolandrevus) nobilis sp. nov. and Odontogryllodes spinifer sp. nov.; and Brevimunda trilineata sp. nov. and Varitrella (Cantotrella) tabin sp. nov., respectively. We al...

We review the taxonomy of the gryllacridids from a small genus Monseremus Ingrisch, 2018. Monseremus bellus (Tan & Wahab, 2018) comb. nov., previously described from Brunei Darussalam before the description of Monseremus, is now added as a second known species in this genus. From a recent field trip, we also added new locality record for the type s...

The European Journal of Taxonomy (EJT), a journal jointly published by 10 Natural History Institutions in Europe, was created in 2011 with the intent to enable its members to collectively tackle the strategic and technical challenges related to the visibility, access, format and financial structure of academic journals, especially publicly-funded t...

The European Journal of Taxonomy (EJT), a journal jointly published by 10 Natural History Institutions in Europe, was created in 2011 with the intent to enable its members to collectively tackle the strategic and technical challenges related to the visibility, access, format and financial structure of academic journals, especially publicly-funded t...

Driven by natural and sexual selection, calling behaviours and call parameters can vary within and between individuals. Phenotypic plasticity can be influenced by environmental conditions (e.g., temperature), size, body condition, and age. Crickets have been classic model organisms for studying the evolution of acoustic communication, but previous...

During a Gryllidae survey in the Southern Cameroonian Plateau, two new species of the tribe Turanogryllini Otte, 1987 were discovered and described, namely Turanogryllus zamakoensis Um Nyobe, Kekeunou & Bilong Bilong sp. nov. and Neogryllopsis gorochovi Um Nyobe, Kekeunou & Ma sp. nov. This finding extends the known distribution of the genera Turan...

Brachypterous crickets from the monophyletic group of Lebinthina were traditionally grouped under the genus Lebinthus. However, the morphology and calling song are highly diversified, prompting the erection of numerous genera to reclassify the species. Based on the strong characteristic fold carrying the diagonal vein of the male forewing, a new ge...

Four new species from three genera of Lebinthina crickets are described here. These include one species of Gnominthus: Gnominthus milneus sp. nov. from Papua New Guinea; two new species of Macrobinthus: Macrobinthus kei sp. nov. and Macrobinthus mamai sp. nov. from Maluka (Indonesia) and Papua New Guinea, respectively; and one species of Microbinth...

The European Journal of Taxonomy (EJT) is a decade-old journal dedicated to the taxonomy of living and fossil eukaryotes. Launched in 2011, the EJT published exactly 900 articles (31 778 pages) from 2011 to 2021. The journal has been processed in its entirety by Plazi, liberating the data therein, depositing it into TreatmentBank, Biodiversity Lite...

Individual fitness can be boosted by behavioural strategies that maximise mate-finding probability while minimising predation risk. Animals that use acoustics to find mates may benefit from using both stationary calling and active exploration, but these also expose them to different types of predators. Studying calling and searching behaviours conc...

In recent years, molecular dating along with geological evidence shifted the consensual hypothesis for the origin of the biota of New Caledonia (NC) from Gondwanan vicariance to relatively recent dispersal across the oceans, making NC a classic oceanic island only 34 Myr old. However, a small number of terrestrial invertebrate taxa show ages incong...

Circadian rhythms are endogenously generated and self-sustaining oscillations that occur at a 24 hours scale and are ubiquitous among animals. Animals rely on their circadian clocks to anticipate cyclical external environmental oscillations to find mates and reproduce, among other activities. Hence, animals that sing to attract mates can modulate t...

The Lebinthini crickets are distributed in Southeast Asia, Western Pacific and tropical South America. They represent more than half of the described species in the subfamily Eneopterinae. These crickets are morphologically and behaviorally diverse, varying in body size, wing morphology (ranging from brachypterous to fully winged) and acoustic sign...

Nisitrus Saussure, 1878 is a diurnal and monophyletic group of eneopterine crickets found in parts of Southeast Asia. Species often have vivid colourations which make them charismatic photograph subjects among macro photographers. However, their taxonomy has not been revised since their original descriptions, whereas there are also species awaiting...

Heminicsara Karny, 1912 is a katydid genus of Agraeciini from the Axylus genus group. It currently comprises 62 species from mainly New Guinea and surrounding archipelagos. Based on recent fieldwork in Lobo in West Papua, Indonesia, a new species of Heminicsara is described here: Heminicsara incrassata sp. nov. It is most readily characterised from...

Researchers have long examined the structure of animal advertisement signals, but comparatively little is known about how often these signals are repeated and what factors predict variation in signaling rate across species. Here, we focus on acoustic advertisement signals to test the hypothesis that calling males experience a tradeoff between inves...

The genus Phaloria belongs to the monophyletic cricket subfamily Phaloriinae. It is s speciose group comprising 68 species found across Southeast Asia and New Guinea and Australia. The numerical diversity of Phaloria in New Guinea is impressive, but more species still await discovery owing to the large size and remoteness of the island. Based on ne...

During the year 2020, the COVID‐19 crisis resulted in many countries around the world going into a nationwide lockdown that lasted between weeks and months (Rutz et al. 2020). Anecdotal observations and social media revealed that some wildlife—both species that have been accustomed to human presence and those less so—returned to the previously huma...

This chapter demonstrates how taxonomy, natural history and descriptive approaches are paramount in the study of evolution. After a brief reminder that taxonomy is part of comparative approaches, it presents the Eneopterinae study model in detail, reviewing the recent contributions related to taxonomic work in terms of knowledge on phylogenetic rel...

The taxonomy of the little-known cricket genus Changiola from the subfamily Pteroplistinae is reviewed here. This genus consisted of three species, two from Malay Peninsula and one from Indochina. Here, we describe a new species from Borneo, the first from the island: Changiola sarawakensis n. sp. We also provide a key to the species, although it i...

The genus Cryncus Gorochov, 1983 composed of African crickets is reported for the first time in Cameroon by the description of two new species collected at Zamakoe, Ongot and Engout’Adjap in the southern Cameroonian plateau during an inventory study of crickets carried out from March 2014 to September 2015. These new species are: Cryncuscamerounens...

Understanding the ecology and evolution of animal communication systems requires detailed data on signal structure and variation across species. Here, we describe the male acoustic signals of 50 species of Neotropical katydids (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) from Panama, with the goal of providing data and recordings for future research on katydid comm...

Les chiffres donnent le vertige : 2 millions d’espèces vivantes décrites par la science mais 8 millions (au moins) toujours inconnues ; soit, au total, plus de 10 millions d’espèces à la surface du globe. Ces 20 % « identifiés » de la biodiversité permettent-ils vraiment de connaître notre planète et son fonctionnement ? Dans les grandes lignes peu...

The genus Lebinthus Stål, 1877 (Orthoptera: Gryllidae: Eneopterinae: Lebinthini) in the Philippines is studied. New locality records are provided for L. bitaeniatus Stål, L. sanchezi Bolívar, L. polillensis Baroga, Yap & Robillard, L. puyos Robillard, and L. luae Robillard & Tan. Six new species are described from Mt. Porras, Sibalom (L. dannybalet...

Recent studies have suggested that the diversity of orthopteran insects in the Eastern African region is largely undersampled and understudied, resulting in numerous new species and genera awaiting discovery, while many species are known from only one or few records, preventing precise assessment of the threat to them. In this paper we describe the...

This article presents an intriguing new cricket species of the tribe Xenogryllini discovered in Northern Malawi. This is the first case of mute and deaf species in the subfamily Eneopterinae; it shows no stridulatory apparatus on short male forewings and no tympana on either side of fore tibiae in both sexes. We introduce the new species and its co...

Understanding the evolutionary origins of communication signals requires careful study of multiple species within a known phylogenetic framework. Most cricket species produce low-frequency calls for mate attraction, whereas they startle to high-frequency sounds similar to bat echolocation. Male crickets in the tribe Lebinthini produce high-frequenc...

The subfamily Eneopterinae is known greatly for its diversified acoustic modalities and disjunct distribution. Within Eneopterinae, tribe Lebinthini is the most studied group, due to its highest species diversity (ca. 150 species in 12 genera), endemic distribution on the islands of Southeast Asia and of the South West Pacific, males’ ability to pr...

Orthoptera from Sandakan, Sabah are relatively understudied compared to some other parts of Borneo, and lack of information of species there can impede our understanding of the origins and biodiversity of orthopterans in Borneo and, in general, Southeast Asia. Based on a recent orthopteran survey in Sandakan, one new species of Lebinthus Stål is de...

This paper provides the commented list of the 824 type specimens of stick-insects of the collection of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle of Paris, corresponding to 319 species (including 287 currently valid species). The catalogue was made together with the digitalization and the databasing of the collection; it comes with an electronic docu...

The Pacific Ocean is the site of the most important diversification of insular reed warblers (Acrocephalus). In the Marquesas Islands (Eastern Polynesia), reed warblers belong to two distinct lineages that have reached the archipelago independently. We used mitochondrial sequences and microsatellite markers and found evidence of gene flow between t...

The genus Paranisitra Chopard (Orthoptera: Gryllidae: Eneopterinae: Nisitrini) is reviewed. New records and additional descriptions are provided for P. longipes Chopard, P. leytensis Robillard, and P. septentria Baroga, Yap & Robillard, and a new species is described from Mindanao: Paranisitra flavofacia n. sp. A taxonomic key and updated checklist...

The new species, Hilethera xinjiangensis sp. nov. (Orthoptera: Acrididae: Oedipodinae) is described based on specimens collected from Xinjiang, northern China. The new species is similar to H. brevipennis Zheng & Lu, 2002 and H. turanica Uvarov, 1925, but differs from: (1) dark brown in general coloration, (2) darker coloration in forewings, (3) fo...

Subfamily Eneopterinae has been studied for its diversified acoustic modalities and disjunct distribution. The genus Xenogryllus Bolívar, 1890 is one of the oldest genera of the subfamily, and the first genus of the tribe Xenogryllini. Xenogryllus is known for its low-frequency calling songs and wide distribution across Africa and Asia. It is known...

Acoustic signals are widely used by both terrestrial and aquatic animals to communicate, and bioacoustics is increasingly used to survey natural, acoustically active communities. More and more acoustic data are made available and await being used in public sound libraries; these data have proved a valuable tool in various fields ranging from ecolog...

Pseudolebinthus is an intriguing genus of the tribe Xenogryllini with a distribtuion restricted to southeast Africa and characterized by unique morphological features such as asymmetrical male forewings and harp veins shaped as elongated balloons. It is sister group to the widely distributed genus Xenogryllus and has been known by two species, P. a...

Southeast Asia harbors an extraordinary species richness and endemism. While only covering 4% of the Earth’s landmass, this region includes four of the planet’s 34 biodiversity hotspots. Its complex geological history generated a megadiverse and highly endemic biota, attracting a lot of attention, especially in the field of island biogeography. Her...

The diversity of the Agraeciini spine-headed katydids (Orthoptera: Tettigonioidea: Conocephalinae) in Southeast Asia remains poorly known, with species still awaiting discovery. Recent field collections in the Philippines resulted in the discovery of three novel species and redescription of two known species of Agraeciini, namely, (1) Anthracites f...

A monograph concerning the Australian crickets was published in 1983 by Otte & Alexander, but this territory still harbors many undiscovered, undescribed treasures. Both existing species of Australian Lebinthus prove to belong to the tribe Eurepini. Our study results in the following new combinations: Salmanites miripara (Otte & Alexander, 1983) n....

1802: the young Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle takes its first step into scientific publishing with the review Annals. 2018: nearly 220 years later, the Muséum periodicals are published online as fast-track articles, available in Diamond Open Access and with XML mark-up. This thorough technical modernisation has been implemented by the Scienc...

RÉSUMÉ 1802 : le tout jeune Muséum devient éditeur scientifique et publie les premières Annales. 2018 : presque 220 ans plus tard, les périodiques du Muséum sont publiés en flux continu, disponibles en accès libre diamant et au format XML. Cette modernisation technologique opérée par l'équipe des Publications scientifiques s'est étalée sur 20 ans....

RÉSUMÉ 1802 : le tout jeune Muséum devient éditeur scientifique et publie les premières Annales. 2018 : presque 220 ans plus tard, les périodiques du Muséum sont publiés en flux continu, disponibles en accès libre diamant et au format XML. Cette modernisation technologique opérée par l'équipe des Publications scientifiques s'est étalée sur 20 ans....

RÉSUMÉ 1802 : le tout jeune Muséum devient éditeur scientifique et publie les premières Annales. 2018 : presque 220 ans plus tard, les périodiques du Muséum sont publiés en flux continu, disponibles en accès libre diamant et au format XML. Cette modernisation technologique opérée par l'équipe des Publications scientifiques s'est étalée sur 20 ans....

RÉSUMÉ 1802 : le tout jeune Muséum devient éditeur scientifique et publie les premières Annales. 2018 : presque 220 ans plus tard, les périodiques du Muséum sont publiés en flux continu, disponibles en accès libre diamant et au format XML. Cette modernisation technologique opérée par l'équipe des Publications scientifiques s'est étalée sur 20 ans....

The receiver sensory system plays a crucial role in the evolution of new communication signals in insects. Among acoustic communicating crickets, the tribe Lebinthini (Eneopterinae) has evolved a unique communication system in that males produce exceptionally high-frequency calls and females respond with vibratory signals to guide males towards the...

Adaptive radiations are major drivers of diversification which are triggered by novel ecological opportunities or opening of new niches due to innovations of variable traits, including key features of communication systems. For example, groups of animals that communicate using a particular type of signal that is not used by other species or not det...

In field crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus), the brain receives auditory input from two ascending neurons; AN1 is sharply tuned to the low-frequency (5 kHz) calling song of the males and controls positive phonotaxis, whereas AN2 triggers negative phonotaxis and is tuned to high- frequency sounds like predatory bat calls. In one group of crickets (Eneop...

Searching on the internet for supplementary information about species of interest can be helpful when trying to document a quite common but under studied species. While revising the genus Xenogryllus Bolívar, 1890, we used this method to find additional references about the species Xenogryllus marmoratus (Haan, 1844). We were extremely interested i...

For a long time, New Caledonia was considered a continental island, a fragment of Gondwana harbouring old clades that originated by vicariance and so were thought to be locally ancient. Recent molecular phylogenetic studies dating diversification and geological data indicating important events of submergence during the Paleocene and Eocene (until 3...

Aim Multiple biogeographical scenarios involving vicariance and different colonization routes can explain disjunct species distributions in the Southern Hemisphere. Here, we tested several alternative hypotheses in Eneopterinae crickets, a diverse subfamily presenting a disjunct worldwide distribution. We inferred a dated phylogeny of Eneopterinae...

In the present study, we report the high-coverage complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of the cricket Cardio- dactylus muiri Otte, 2007. The mitogenome was sequenced using a long-PCR approach on an Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine (PGM) for next generation sequencing technology. The total length of the amplified mitogenome is 16,328 bp, re...

Ligypterus najtae n. sp., a new species of Neotropical Eneopterinae Saussure, 1874 cricket, is described from Mounts Tumuc-Humac in French Guiana. Description focusses on general morphology, male and female genitalia, and forewing venation. Bioacoustical analyses of the calling song reveal that this species uses high-frequency signals. © Publicatio...