Cicada Mania

Dedicated to cicadas, the most amazing insects in the world.

Locations where cicadas can be found, including countries and continents.

September 15, 2022

Cicada Stamps from Australia

Filed under: Anapsaltoda | Arenopsaltria | Australia | Cyclochila | Stamps — Tags: , , — Dan @ 7:25 am

Looks like the post office of Australia has cicada themed stamps. As they say in the Pokemon world, “got to collect them all” (or something like that).

Update:
Here’s a photo of the actual stamps. I got them on eBay.
Cicada Stamp Set

Masked Devil (Cyclochila australasiae) stamp:
Masked Devil stamp

More about Masked Devil cicadas:

Golden Emperor (Anapsaltoda pulchra) stamp:
Golden Emperor Stamp

More about Golden Emperor cicadas:

Sandgrinder (Arenopsaltria fullo) stamp:
Sandgrinder stamp

More Sandgrinder cicada action:

May 12, 2022

Chremistica ribhoi, the World Cup Cicada, is emerging!

Filed under: Chremistica | Cryptotympanini | India | Periodical — Tags: — Dan @ 4:33 am

Chremistica ribhoi, aka Niangtasar and the World Cup Cicada, is emerging! Chremistica ribhoi is a periodical cicada that lives in India (state of Meghalaya) and emerges every four years. It is nicknamed the World Cup cicada because it emerges the same year as the World Cup soccer/football sports event.

Sudhanya Ray Hajong sent us the following photos and text describing the event:

A molted, teneral (soft) male:
a newly emerged teneral adult of C.ribhoi

The worldcup cicada emergence May 2022

The four year long wait is over for the young and old of the villagers of Saiden village in the
northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, and if you happen to be around you not fail to
notice the excitement among the young and old, men and women here in Saiden . It is
beginning of May and the World cup cicada or ‘Niangtaser’ as is called by the Bhoi
community has started emerging. The forest of Iewsier located on this a remote corner of
the world is suddenly buzzing with the calls of thousands of ‘Niangtaser’ or Chremistica
ribhoi Hajong & Yaakop, 2013.

Come sunset, one will see young children, boys and girls, and even aged man and
women with a bag carried around their shoulder, a piece of bamboo cane hung by tread
around their neck and a torch in hand – they are conversing in excitement and flocking in
small groups proceeding on trails taking them inside the forest. The atmosphere is almost
festive and everyone is so friendly and smiling expecting eagerly to seek out and pick as
many ‘ Niangtaser’ as possible, to be brought back home for delicious preparation and to
be pickles and dried and kept for months to relish the unique taste that Mother nature has
bestowed.

The nymphs with their powerful forelegs silently dig over ground in the stillness of the
night and one can see the still freshly emerged nymphs covered in soil crawling sluggishly
seeking anything upright to cling upward until they can secure themself on the surface with
their claws, the slow process then begins, with the splitting of the thoracic integument
along the mid dorsal line, the adult gradually pushes out of the shell until they are fully
outside the old exuviae, the wings which were crumpled slowly unfold and the now fully
emerged teneral adult with their fully spread-out wings appear as a beautiful greenish
ethereal glow under the soft light of our headlamps.

Come daylight and the adults now in hundreds and thousands fly out resting in clusters on
tips of twigs and branches of the several bamboos, one would hear the incessant and
almost whistling crescendo of calls of the ‘Niangtaser’ with the rising heat of the sun if you
are just below these trees one would feel the rain like shower drizzling earthward from the
hundreds of adults peeing from the tree tops.

This year though the fear of a fresh COVID resurgence had dampened the spirit of the
villagers of Siden , as no ‘Niangtaser’ Festival could be organised with much fanfare like
the previous emergence years.

The Folklore of the Bhoi people – A sick old women who was transformed into the
peeing ‘Niangtsers’

Long ago as the Bhoi Khasis of Siden village traditionally believed that, there lived an old
women who suddenly fell sick with a strange stomach ailment that made her to go
frequently to calls of nature for her frequent watery discharge. Fearing that her ailment
would spread among the villagers, the village elders finally decided that she was to taken
to the forest and kept separated alone in a bamboo thatch until she could get herself
cured. It is said that, when the villagers next morning went to check on her with food and
water, they were surprised to find they she had strangely vanished, but surprisingly they
found thousands of the cicadas everywhere on the branches of the trees and strangely all
of them were found to be discharging some kind of fluid from the rear of their abdomen.
They were thus lead to believe that the forest sprit feeling pity on her had transformed the
old sick women into thousands of the cicadas, and to this day the old women appear
around the forest of Iewsier in the form of thousands of ‘Niangtasers’ and even now she
still suffers from her stomach ailment and pass frequent watery discharges from the top of
trees.

Will the ‘Niangtaser’ come again and again, after every four years, few village the elders
who narrates how once upon a time ‘Niangtaser were plentiful and widespread; and how
now things have changed and how forest were gone along with many areas from were
‘Niangtaser’ are no more found. They are saddened by this development and tells us that
the number of ‘Niangtaser’is dwindling, forest patches where large number of them
emerges are no longer there, in its place farmlands and houses had appeared, they fear it
is not far when the folklore and the ‘Niangtaser’ that is so relished will vanish and only
remain a folklore of the distant past. The unique gift of mother nature may no longer be
there if we do not check our greed and our want for more and more land and more
material wealth. Village elders like Bah Kret Sungkli caution us that if we do not part our
greedy ways we may have to lose this wonderful gift of mother nature.

By Sudhanya Ray Hajong with able field assistance from my dear Rodeson Thangkiew,
who was inspired by ‘Niangtaser’ and to take up his PhD in cicadas.

A poem by Sudhanya Ray Hajong:
Niangtaser poem

Two nymphs that have emerged from the ground:
nymphs of C.ribhoi just emerges and covered with soil

A molting adult:
emerging adult

A molting adult:
side view of teneral adult with a termite attracted to our headlamp

A molting adult:
teneral adult in process of emergence

March 27, 2022

Megatibicen auletes singing at dusk in Brendan T Byrne State Park in New Jersey on July 15th 2021

Filed under: Cryptotympanini | Megatibicen | Sounds | United States | Video — Tags: — Dan @ 6:46 am

Here’s a video of a Megatibicen auletes cicada singing at dusk in Brendan T Byrne State Park in New Jersey on July 15th, 2021.

Neotibicen lyricen molting in New Jersey July 2021

Filed under: Cryptotympanini | Molting | Neotibicen | Nymphs | Teneral | United States — Dan @ 5:39 am

Here are some Neotibicen lyricen molting in New Jersey July 2021.

Rich caramel eyes; blues & pinks in pronotal collar, legs, and mesonotum; green wings (that will stay green) and orange abdomen.

Neotibicen lyricen New Jersey July 2021

Neotibicen lyricen New Jersey July 2021

Neotibicen lyricen New Jersey July 2021 02

Molting Neotibicen tibicen cicadas

Filed under: Cryptotympanini | Molting | Neotibicen | Teneral | United States — Tags: — Dan @ 5:10 am

Here’s some photos of Molting Neotibicen tibicen tibicen cicadas taken in New Jersey in July of 2021.

Neotibicen tibicen tibicen July 2021

Neotibicen tibicen tibicen July 2021

Neotibicen tibicen tibicen July 2021

Neotibicen tibicen tibicen July 2021

Neotibicen tibicen tibicen July 2021

Neotibicen tibicen tibicen July 2021

February 26, 2022

Unique Cicada website from Japan

Filed under: Japan — Dan @ 9:18 am

Unique Cicada” (that is how Chrome translates it) is a large blog featuring many photos of cicadas from around the world. The site is owned by @musinomushi on Twitter. Instantly one of the premier cicada websites.

The site is categorized by cicada tribes, for example, Carinetini, Cryptotympanini and Zammarini.

Here’s what it looks like translated to English by Chrome.
Unique Cicada

October 27, 2021

Cicadas of southern Africa: An illustrated guide to known species by R.D. Stephen

Filed under: Africa (Continent) | Botswana | Lesotho | Namibia | South Africa | Zimbabwe — Dan @ 4:50 pm

It isn’t often we get a single cicada publication as complete and awesome as Cicadas of southern Africa: An illustrated guide to known species by R.D. Stephen. The document is 224 pages long and includes color photos of dozens of cicadas with maps & text descriptions.

R.D. Stephen's Cicadas of southern Africa

Thanks to beetledude in iNaturalist and David Emery for letting me know.

August 15, 2021

A cicada… in England?!

Filed under: England | Tibicina — Dan @ 2:14 pm

A few years back a project was launched to discover if the New Forest cicada (Cicadetta montana) still exists in England. It once existed in southern England for sure, but seems to have gone extinct. To date, none have been found.

Recently a cicada was reported found in England on iNaturalist, appearing to belong to the genus Tibicina. The best resource for European cicadas is SONGS OF EUROPEAN SINGING CICADAS. Looking at the navigation of the website it looks like there are nine Tibicina in Europe (maybe more). The cicada on iNaturalist is brown with orange highlights: u-shaped marks on its mesonotum, an orange outline of its pronotal collar, and an orange line down the middle of its head. Wing veins appear brown & black and appear to be warped during the molting process. It might be teneral — still soft from the molting process — and so its adult colors have not fully developed.

So — is it a native to England or a stowaway in some cargo from mainland Europe?

The Twitter account @MorphoCicada posted this on Twitter, which alerted me to the matter.

January 24, 2021

Cicadas @ UCONN, a new Cicada website

Filed under: John Cooley | Magicicada | Periodical | United States — Dan @ 9:12 pm

Magicicada.org was an amazing website filled with information about Magicicada periodical cicadas and backed by cicada expert, John Cooley.

The site now has a new address and look: Cicadas @ UCONN (https://cicadas.uconn.edu/). Bookmark it in preparation for the 2021 Brood X emergence.

Cicadas @ UCONN

UCONN (University of Connecticut) has other cicada websites such as The Simon Lab and Cicada Central.

January 16, 2021

Three new species of cicadas from Meghalaya, India

Filed under: Dundubiini | India | Mata | Vivek Sarkar — Dan @ 9:45 pm

Three new species of cicadas have been discovered in Meghalaya, India:
Mata meghalayana, Mata lenonia, and Mata ruffordii.

Mata cicadas  Vivek Sarkar
Photo courtesy of Vivek Sarkar.

Access the paper on Research Gate or Zootaxa Vol 4908, No 1.

Paper title: Description of three new species of the genus Mata Distant, 1906 (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Cicadinae: Oncotympanini) with notes on their natural history from the Indian state of Meghalaya, India

Authors: Vivek Sarkar, Cuckoo Mahapatra, Pratyush P. Mohapatra, Manoj V. Nair, Krushnamegh Kunte

Abstract: “Three new species of the Asian genus Mata Distant, 1906 (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) viz. Mata lenonia sp.nov.; Mata ruffordii sp.nov. and Mata meghalayana sp.nov. are described from the Indian state of Meghalaya. Keys and taxonomic descriptions of these species are provided with detailed accounts of their natural history and acoustics.”

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