Crowd creates a single User/Group directory allowing you to manage your users in a single place. This is especially useful if you combine multiple directories to create a single view of all of your users.
Crowd will synch all of the users and groups to the applications you have connected to it. What these users and groups can do is determined by the product, not Crowd.
For Jira, you can see how many licenses are consumed by going to Administration->Applications->Application Access. This is where you determine which groups will be able to access Jira and thereby consume a license.
The default group only pertains to users who are added directly in Jira, not in Crowd. When you create a user in the local Jira directory and indicate that they will have access to Jira, then they are added to the default group. It has no effect on users in Crowd.
If you are using JIRA Service Desk, then you can @mention users who do not have license access but can access the ticket through the portal. You cannot @mention someone who does not have access to the issue, so Jira Software and Jira Core will not allow you to include someone who does not consume a license.
TL;DR: Look at the Jira Application Access to determine which groups consume a license and your current usage. Crowd has nothing to do with this.
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