The fast-calling short-tailed cricket Anurogryllus celerinictus Walker, 1973 (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) occurs in Cuba, Greater Antilles

a cricket

. Live Anurogryllus celerinictus from Cuba, photographed in captivity on white background: a) adult male; bc) same adult female, d) juvenile. Note "short-winged" male and that same female individual displays either "shortwinged" or "long-winged" condition.
Ecologica Montenegrina 20: 163-167 (2019) This journal is available online at: www.biotaxa.org/em Figure 2. Live Anurogryllus celerinictus from Cuba, photographed in nocturnal activity at nature: a) adult male, calling on a street curb; b) "long-winged" male, feeding on a grass root; c) "short-winged" male, retreating into its self-dug burrow after being disturbed; d) adult male, using a crack in the wall baseboard as burrow.
Recently, around her home at Havana City, the author recorded during calling, photographed in situ ( fig. 1d) and collected a large series of adult and juvenile specimens of a conspicuous ground cricket. After a careful comparison, they were identified satisfactorily as the Fast-calling Short-tailed Cricket Anurogryllus celerinictus Walker, 1973. It was described originally from Jamaica (type-locality), Grand Cayman and Florida (Walker, 1973), but so far never recorded from Cuba. The complete data of the Cuban specimens obtained herein (all deposited in ethanol 80%, in the author's personal collection-SY), are listed as follows:   (Walker, 1973), the main diagnostic characters are listed as follows: 1) male and female tegmina covering essentially the whole abdomen; 2) number of tooth in the stridulatory file fewer than 60, with file tooth density 16-19 teeth/mm; 3) male pronotum posterior width 5.5-6.5 mm.
The genitalia of males from Havana were extracted, photographed and directly compared to those of Jamaican A. celerinictus and Hispaniolan A. muticus caraibus illustrated by Otte & Perez-Gelabert (2009: 72); even though the differences were subtle, the Cuban sample ( fig. 3) definitely matched the former closest. In addition, several of these males from Havana were digitally recorded during calling at early evening; the resulting audio files were compared to those of Floridian A. celerinictus available at the Singing Insect of North America website (SINA, recorded by Thomas J. Walker himself) and found to be identical. It must be noted here that the alae length was implicitly used by Walker (1973Walker ( : 1270 as a sexual secondary dimorphic character for A. celerinictus, e.g., males and females were reported as either short-winged or longwinged, respectively. Nevertheless, amongst the Cuban specimens of this species (both wild and captivereared), this condition is neither fixed nor sexually dimorphic, i.e., each individual can voluntarily display both conditions (figs 1-2).
In Cuba, A. celerinictus is a fossorial species which inhabits in underground burrows, usually dug on the damp soil with very low grass cover in gardens, backyards and parterres ( fig. 2c, 5); nevertheless, it can opportunistically use as such the cracks and crevices of wall baseboards and sidewalks ( fig. 2d). Males call almost exclusively during early evening (18:30-22:00 hrs. EST), usually sitting in their burrow entrance with abdomen tip off (using the cone-shaped burrow entrance to amplify the sound) or more rarely outside in open ground ( fig. 2a). Females apparently leave their burrow only seldom, e.g., only one was found here (figs. 1bc) and it was starting courtship with a male, just outside the burrow of the latter.
In Havana City it lives syntopically with two common and widespread Caribbean house crickets: Gryllus assimilis (Fabricius, 1775) and Gryllodes sigillatus Walker, 1869. Nevertheless, both seem to be much more scarce or localized at this site: only one adult male of each species was collected by the author, the former on an unrecorded date of the year 2015 and the latter on February 7 th , 2019. This is the first record of A. celerinictus from Cuba ( fig. 4) and consequently, the fifth member of Anurogryllus known to occur in this country. The species most closely-related to A. celerinictus is A. muticus, which according to Walker (1973) can be satisfactorily identified best by calling, because both species are morphologically very similar (e.g., a practical example of species' biological concept). Currently, the present author is preparing a thorough revision of the Cuban Gryllidae, which will revisit all species in detail (S. Yong, in prep.).

Figures 4-5. 4
Geographical distribution of Anurogryllus celerinictus: previous records (red symbols) and new records (yellow symbols). Image frame = 2,000 x 1,000 km. 5 Habitat and microhabitat of Anurogryllus celerinictus at Havana City, Cuba. This section of the grassy parterre yielded 12 of the examined specimens in three consecutive nights.