Acoustic monitoring for tropical insect conservation

Monitoring the species-specific sounds produced by insects could provide us with a rapid, reliable, non-invasive measure of tropical ecosystem health and biodiversity. Although acoustic biodiversity monitoring has made rapid progress over the past decade, the focus has been mostly on vertebrates, even though insects far outnumber them and tropical soundscapes are dominated by insect sounds. Here, we provide an overview of song features for the major sound-producing insect groups, identify technological milestones and describe impediments for analysing tropical soundscapes and insect communities. We review some promising best practices using singing insects for non-invasive acoustic profiling and tracking of diversity in rainforest ecosystems under threat. We suggest a roadmap to support insect conservation by integrating passive acoustic monitoring within monitoring networks and environmental certification schemes. Artificial intelligence could help to analyse the wealth of existing data, but requires efficient curation of sound repositories, including emerging citizen science projects.This article is part of the theme issue 'Acoustic monitoring for tropical ecology and conservation'.