Cicada Mania

David Emery send us a photo of a Cystosoma saundersii (bottle cicada) from Australia and we added it to the gallery.

Just to complement the Aussie cicadas, a small colony of these Cystosoma saundersii (bottle cicadas) have been droning and rattling at dusk around Burwoood in Sydney for the past 2 months. This is their southern-most extension down the east coast of Australia.
cheers,
David.

Click the link above or the image below to access large versions of the image.

More information about Cystosoma saundersii on the CSIRO site.

So it’s cicada time in Australia again — at least for the Green Grocers. Here’s every Australian cicada photo on the site:

1. Orange Drummers (Thopha colorata) by Jodi.
2. Double Drummer (Thopha saccata) by Kevin Lee.
3. Emerging Double Drummers (Thopha saccata) by David Emery
4. Another Double Drummer (Thopha saccata) by Kevin Lee.
5. A Green Grocer (Cyclochila australasiae) by Kevin Lee.
6. A box of Green Grocers (Cyclochila australasiae) by Kevin Lee.
7. Green Grocer (Cyclochila australasiae) by Bron.
8. A series of photos of a Green Grocer emerging into adulthood (Cyclochila australasiae) by George Dalidakis.
9. rare green yellow Green Grocer (Cyclochila australasiae) by Kevin Lee.
10. Top view of that rare green yellow Green Grocer (Cyclochila australasiae) by Kevin Lee.
11. White Knight / Black Prince by Kevin Lee.
12. Masked Devil cicada (Cyclochila australasiae) by David Emery.
13. White Drummer cicada (Arunta perulata) by David Emery.
14. Redeye cicada (Psaltoda moerens) by David Emery.
15. Cherry Nose cicada (Macrotristria angularis) by David Emery.
16. Blue Moon (Cyclochila australasiae) by David Emery (found by his daughter).
17. Diemaniana euronotiana by David Emery.
18. Bagpipe cicada (Lembeja paradoxa) was taken by Timothy Emery.
19. A Floury Baker (Aleeta curvicosta) by Michelle Thompson.

Pauropsalta mneme, originally uploaded by dhobern.

Found this on Flickr. Is this the same species as the latest mystery cicada? Thanks to David Emery for the tip.

Can you identify this Australian cicada??? The photo was take by Elizabeth Barnett.

Hi, I wondered whether you can help me identify a cicada we saw at Hall’s Gap (Midwest Victoria, Australia) in January this year? It had a limited tolerance for being photographed and took off asap. From memory its call was a sort of short “eck! eck!” rather than the continuous shrill you get from a greengrocer. There were heaps of them calling but this was the only one we saw. I’d estimate it was about half the size of a greengrocer.

I asked David Emery, and he said:

Looks pretty close to Pauropsalta mneme (Alarm clock ticker) with the orange belly and wing infuscations and is in the right place! Heard the first C.celis around Sydney last week, but very dry at present.

After a Google search for Pauropsalta mneme I’d say David was correct.

This is a photo of the amazing Bagpipe cicada (Lembeja paradoxa) was taken by Timothy Emery (David Emery’s son).

Attached is a photo taken by my son, Timothy Emery from Thursday Island, Torres Strait off Cape York, Queensland. This a male “bagpipe cicada” (Lembeja paradoxa) singing for his female. These guys at rest look like dead leaves with wings folded under stems of grass, but when singing at dusk, rush up the stems and can expand their abdomens incredibly up to 5-10 x resting size (hence the bagpipe bit) and emit a very loud droning sound for their size. A great emergence of these on Thursday Island in the first 2 weeks of January.

Here is a larger version.

David Marshall and Kathy Hill have discovered that a particular species of katydid mimics the wing-flick of female cicadas to lure male cicadas to their certain doom.

We have found that predatory Chlorobalius leucoviridis katydids (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) can attract male cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) by imitating the species-specific wing-flick replies of sexually receptive female cicadas. This aggressive mimicry is accomplished both acoustically, with tegminal clicks, and visually, with synchronized body jerks. Remarkably, the katydids respond effectively to a variety of complex, species-specific Cicadettini songs, including songs of many cicada species that the predator has never encountered.

Read the entire research article: Versatile Aggressive Mimicry of Cicadas by an Australian Predatory Katydid.

Australia should be knee deep in cicadas by now. Here’s a list of Australian cicada posts on the site.

1. Bottle cicada
2. Diemaniana euronotiana
3. Orange Drummers
4. More Orange Drummers
5. Emerging Thopha
6. Australian cicada information
7. Masked Devil cicada
8. White Drummer cicada
9. Redeye cicada
10. Cherry Nose cicada
11. Blue Moon cicada
12. Double Drummers and Green Grocers
13. More Double Drumers and a yellow-green Green Grocer
14. Another Green Grocer
15. List of names of the cicadas of Australia
16. Floury Baker
17. A Green Grocer emerging

Profile of a Cicada, originally uploaded by Peppergroyne.

This is a Bottle Cicada from Australia.