Cicada Mania

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

July 10, 2015

Major Changes to the Tibicen genera

Sometimes you wake up and the whole world is different. See this cicada:

Teneral Neotibicen tibicen
photo by me.

… when I went to sleep she was a Tibicen tibicen tibicen, but now I know she is a Neotibicen tibicen tibicen. 10 years ago, she was a Tibicen chloromera. 130 years ago, she was Cicada tibicen. Cicada names change as researchers discover their differences.

Two new papers have split the Tibicen (or Lyristes) genera into many genera: Tibicen (European Tibicen), Auritibicen (Tibicen of Asia/Japan), Neotibicen (mostly eastern North American Tibicen), and Hadoa (Tibicen of the western United States).

The first paper is Description of a new genus, Auritibicen gen. nov., of Cryptotympanini (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) with redescriptions of Auritibicen pekinensis (Haupt, 1924) comb. nov. and Auritibicen slocumi (Chen, 1943) comb. nov. from China and a key to the species of Auritibicen by Young June Lee, 2015, Zootaxa 3980 (2): 241—254. This paper establishes the new genera Auritibicen, and the members of the Tibicen/Lyristes genera fall into that genera. Here is a link. So, Tibicen flammatus aka Lyristes flammatus of Japan, for example, becomes Auritibicen flammatus.

A. flammatus
Auritibicen flammatus photo by Osamu Hikino.

The second paper is Molecular phylogenetics, diversification, and systematics of Tibicen Latreille 1825 and allied cicadas of the tribe Cryptotympanini, with three new genera and emphasis on species from the USA and Canada (Hemiptera: Auchenorrhyncha: Cicadidae) by Kathy B. R. Hill, David C. Marshall, Maxwell S. Moulds & Chris Simon. 2015, Zootaxa 3985 (2): 219—251. This paper establishes the Neotibicen (Hill and Moulds), and Hadoa (Moulds) genera. This paper also sought to establish the Subsolanus genera for the Asian Tibicen/Lyristes species but the previously mentioned paper by Young June Lee has precedence because it was published first. Link to paper.

To recap, European Tibicen/Lyristes are Tibicen

Lyristes plebejus photo by Iván Jesús Torresano García
Tibicen plebejus photo by Iván Jesus Torresano García.

… Asian Tibicen/Lyristes are now Auritibicen. Mostly-eastern North American Tibicen are now Neotibicen, and Western North American Tibicen are now Hadoa. Note that, the catagorization is not due to location, but to genetic and physiological evaluation (read the papers).

Needless to say this website and others have a lot of name changing to do, but in the mean time, here’s where the North American species fall out:

Neotibicen
Tibicen auletes Neotibicen auletes
Tibicen auriferus Neotibicen auriferus
Tibicen canicularis Neotibicen canicularis
Tibicen cultriformis Neotibicen cultriformis
Tibicen davisi davisi Neotibicen davisi davisi
Tibicen davisi harnedi Neotibicen davisi harnedi
Tibicen dealbatus Neotibicen dealbatus
Tibicen dorsatus Neotibicen dorsatus
Tibicen figuratus Neotibicen figuratus
Tibicen latifasciatus Neotibicen latifasciatus
Tibicen linnei Neotibicen linnei
Tibicen lyricen engelhardti Neotibicen lyricen engelhardti
Tibicen lyricen lyricen Neotibicen lyricen lyricen
Tibicen lyricen virescens Neotibicen lyricen virescens
Tibicen pronotalis pronotalis Neotibicen pronotalis pronotalis
Tibicen pronotalis walkeri Neotibicen pronotalis walkeri
Tibicen pruinosus fulvus Neotibicen pruinosus fulvus
Tibicen pruinosus pruinosus Neotibicen pruinosus pruinosus
Tibicen resh Neotibicen resh
Tibicen resonans Neotibicen resonans
Tibicen robinsonianus Neotibicen robinsonianus
Tibicen similaris Neotibicen similaris
Tibicen superbus Neotibicen superbus
Tibicen tibicen australis Neotibicen tibicen australis
Tibicen tibicen tibicen Neotibicen tibicen tibicen
Tibicen tremulus Neotibicen tremulus
Tibicen winnemanna Neotibicen winnemanna
Hadoa
Tibicen bifidus Hadoa bifida
Tibicen chiricahua Hadoa chiricahua
Tibicen duryi Hadoa duryi
Tibicen inauditus Hadoa inaudita
Tibicen longioperculus Hadoa longiopercula
Tibicen neomexicensis Hadoa neomexicensis
Tibicen parallelus Hadoa parallela
Tibicen simplex Hadoa simplex
Tibicen texanus Hadoa texana
Tibicen townsendii Hadoa townsendii

6 Comments »

  1. david emery says:

    Ah Gents, the march of progress means that we have to constantly relabel our specimens- It also dates our reference books with all those wonderful photos!! Don’t worry, as Kees mentions, the Australia Cicadetta genus is now a whole range of new genera (Moulds 2012). You should see how virus nomenclature has changed over the decades.
    Dan, this is a great synopsis of the new information from Kathy et al and Young June. Thanks for the prompt. Dave- great paper1
    David.

  2. Kees Green says:

    while this may seem initially frustrating to some, it’s actually makes things simpler once you are used to it.
    This is not an isolated incident, just see what happened to Cicadetta here in Australia.
    Now we can store and show our cicadas that are true to their genus/family etc.
    As we understand what makes a species a species we learn more about the differences between species. While someone like me struggles to understand some of the science behind it, I love it just the same

  3. Dave Marshall says:

    Changes like this are indeed disruptive, but in this case the reassignments are overdue. The only way to allow all of the current Tibicen species to retain the name, and still conform to current standards in taxonomy, would be to move all of the species of Cryptotympana, Raiateana, Cacama, Cornuplura, and probably other genera into Tibicen, which would create one very unwieldy genus (and disrupt the other names).

    This situation illustrates the advantage of a well-established set of common names, which do not need to change very often.

  4. Greg Holmes says:

    Apparently it’s possible to admire and respect the people who did this and shake one’s fist skyward because of the amount of editing one will have to do as a result, because that’s what I’m doing.

  5. Elias says:

    This will make understanding the scientific names of all these cicadas so much more confusing. This is a huge change.

    1. Dan says:

      Read the PDF linked to the article — it is quite amazing.

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