Everything about Cicada totally explained
A
cicada is an
insect of the order
Homoptera, suborder
Auchenorrhyncha, in the superfamily
Cicadoidea, with large eyes wide apart on the head and usually transparent, well-veined wings. There are about 2,500 species of cicada around the globe, and many remain unclassified. Cicadas live in temperate to tropical climates where they're among the most widely recognized of all insects, mainly due to their large size and remarkable acoustic talents. Cicadas are sometimes colloquially called "locusts", although they're unrelated to true
locusts, which are a kind of
grasshopper. They are also known as "jar flies". Cicadas are related to
leafhoppers and
spittlebugs. In parts of the southern
Appalachian Mountains in the
United States they're known as "dry flies" because of the dry shell they leave behind.
Cicadas don't bite or sting, are benign to humans, and are not considered a
pest. Many people around the world regularly eat cicadas: the female is prized as it's meatier. Cicadas have been (or are still) eaten in
Ancient Greece,
China,
Malaysia,
Burma,
Latin America and the
Congo. Cicadas are employed in the traditional medicines of China
The name is a direct derivation of the
Latin cicada. (In classical
Greek it was called a
tettix, and in modern Greek
tzitzikas.)
In 2004, "cicada" ranked 6th in
Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year.
Taxonomy
Cicadas are arranged into two families:
Tettigarctidae (
q.v.) and
Cicadidae. There are two
extant species of Tettigarctidae, one in southern
Australia, and the other in
Tasmania. The family Cicadidae is subdivided into the subfamilies Tettigadinae, Cicadinae and Cicadettinae, and they occur on all continents except
Antarctica.
The largest cicadas are in the
genera Pomponia and
Tacua. There are some 200 species in 38 genera in
Australia, about 450 in Africa, about 100 in the
Palaearctic and exactly one species in
England, the
New Forest cicada,
Melampsalta montana, widely distributed throughout Europe. There are about 150 species in
South Africa.
Most of the North American species are in the genus
Tibicen - the
annual or
dog-day cicadas (so named because they emerge in late July and August
). The best-known North American genus is
Magicicada, however. These periodical cicadas have an extremely long life cycle of 13 to 17 years and
emerge in large numbers. while many other cicadas can voluntarily raise their body temperatures as much as 22 °
C above ambient temperature.
Cicada song
Male cicadas have loud noisemakers called "
timbals" on the sides of the
abdominal base. Their "singing" isn't the
stridulation (where two structures are rubbed against one another) of many other familiar sound-producing insects like
crickets: the timbals are regions of the
exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex membrane with thin, membranous portions and thickened "ribs". Contracting the internal timbal muscles produces a clicking sound as the timbals buckle inwards. As these muscles relax, the timbals return to their original position producing another click. The interior of the male abdomen is substantially hollow to amplify the resonance of the sound. A cicada rapidly vibrates these membranes, and enlarged chambers derived from the
tracheae make its body serve as a
resonance chamber, greatly amplifying the sound. They modulate their noise by wiggling their abdomens toward and away from the tree that they're on. Additionally, each species has its own distinctive
song.
Although only males produce the cicadas' distinctive sound, both sexes have
tympana, which are membranous structures used to detect sounds and thus the cicadas' equivalent of ears. Males can disable their own tympana while calling. Adult cicadas have a sideways-ridged plate where the mouth is in normal insects.
Some cicadas produce sounds up to 120
dB (SPL) "at close range", among the loudest of all insect-produced sounds. Conversely, some small species have songs so high in pitch that the noise is inaudible to humans. Species have different mating songs to ensure they attract the appropriate mate. The song intensity of the louder cicadas acts as an effective bird repellent. Males of many species tend to gather which creates a greater sound intensity and protects against avian predators. It can be difficult to determine which direction(s) cicada song is coming from, because the low pitch carries well and because it may, in fact, be coming from many directions at once, as cicadas in various trees all make noise at once.
In addition to the mating song, many species also have a distinct distress call, usually a somewhat broken and erratic sound emitted when an individual is seized. A number of species also have a courtship song, which is often a quieter call and is produced after a female has been drawn by the calling song.
The song of the cicada is a favorite
sound effect used by
filmmakers and
animators as a means of representing silence,
pathos, and the great outdoors.
Life cycle
After mating, the female cuts slits into the bark of a twig, and into these she deposits her eggs. She may do so repeatedly, until she's laid several hundred eggs. When the eggs hatch, the newborn nymphs drop to the ground, where they burrow. Most cicadas go through a life cycle that lasts from two to five years. Some species have much longer life cycles, for example the
Magicicada goes through a 17- or occasionally 13-year life cycle. These long life cycles are an adaptation to
predators such as the
cicada killer wasp and
praying mantis, as a predator couldn't regularly fall into synchrony with the cicadas. Both 13 and 17 are
prime numbers, so while a cicada with a 15-year life cycle could be preyed upon by a predator with a three- or five-year life cycle, the 13- and 17-year cycles allow them to stop the predators falling into step.
The insects spend most of the time that they're underground as
nymphs at depths ranging from about 30 cm (1
ft) up to 2.5
m (about 8½ ft). The nymphs feed on root juice and have strong front legs for digging.
In the final nymphal
instar, they construct an exit tunnel to the surface and emerge. They then
moult (shed their skins), on a nearby plant for the last time and emerge as adults. The abandoned skins remain, still clinging to the bark of trees.
Cicadas in Australia
Around 220 cicada species have been identified in
Australia, many of which go by fanciful common names such as:
cherry nose,
brown baker,
red eye (
Psaltoda moerens),
green grocer/
green monday,
yellow monday,
whisky drinker,
double drummer (
Thopha saccata), and
black prince. The Australian green grocer,
Cyclochila australasiae, is amongst the loudest insects in the world.
Being principally tropical insects, most Australian species are found in the northern states. However, cicadas occur in almost every part of Australia: the hot wet tropical north;
Tasmanian snowfields; Victorian beaches and sand dunes such as Torquay and deserts. According to Max Moulds of the
Australian Museum in Sydney: "the 'green grocer' is unusual in its ability to adapt perfectly to the urbanized environment." Cicada sounds are a defining quality of
Melbourne,
Sydney and
Canberra during late spring and the summer months.
Cicadas inhabit both native and exotic plants including tall trees, coastal mangroves, suburban lawns and desert shrubbery. The great variety of flora and climatic variation found in north-eastern
Queensland results in its being the richest region for the spread of different species. The area of greatest species diversity is a 100
km (60 mi) wide region around
Cairns. In some areas they're preyed on by the cicada-hunter (
Exeirus lateritius) which stings and stuns cicadas high in the trees, making them drop to the ground where the cicada-hunter mounts and rides them, pushing with its hind-legs, sometimes over a distance of a hundred yards, till they can be shoved down into its burrow, where the numb cicada is placed onto one of many shelves in a 'catacomb', to form the food-stock for the wasp grub that grows out of the egg deposited there .
Cicada and Symbolism
In
France, the cicada is used to represent the
folklore of
Provence and
Mediterranean cities (despite the fact some species live in
Alsace or the
Paris Basin).
A summer insect (at least in temperate countries), the cicada has represented insouciance (for example nonchalance or indifference) since
antiquity; the fabulist
Aesop made a cicada the hero in a
fable called
La Cigale et la Fourmi (
The Cicada and the Ant).
Jean de La Fontaine used this fable in his collection two thousand years after Aesop, in his own work entitled
Les fables de La Fontaine. His version of this fable is so well-known and well-studied that it has become a symbol of his
literary genre.
In
The Tale of Genji, the title character poetically likens one of his many love interests to a cicada for the way she delicately sheds her scarf the way a cicada sheds its shell when molting.
Culinary Use
In North China cicadas are skewered or stir fried as a delicacy.
Genera
Gallery
Image:TibicenCanicularis.jpg|Tibicen canicularis sitting on a leaf in Munster Hamlet, Ontario.
Image:Aburazemi.jpg|Aburazemi - Gratopsaltria nigrofuscata
Image:Lyristes plebejus3.jpg|Magicicadas molting
Image:CicadaMoult.jpg|A cicada moult
Image:Cicada se aust.jpg|Cicada are commonly found in south eastern Australia
Image:Premolt Brood XIII.JPG|Magicicada nymph
Image:Newly molted Brood XIII.JPG|Newly molted Magicicada Brood XIII
Image:Cicada_cropped.jpg|A cicada in the process of moulting
Image:Exit_tunnels_of_Cicada_B.jpg|Exit tunnels of cicada in Japan
Image:SpottedCicada.jpg|Spotted cicada
Image:cicadamoults.jpg|Moults
Image:cicadatree1.jpg|Cicada in tree
Image:White cicada.jpg|Freshly molted Magicicada in northern Illinois
Image:Cicadas on address sign.JPG|Cicadas on an address sign, Lake Geneva, WI
Image:Cicada on tire.JPG|Adult cicada on car tire, Lake Geneva, WI
Image:Nymph shells.JPG|Empty nymph shells in tree, Lake Geneva, WI
Image:Cicada illinois summer of 2007.jpg|A photograph of a cicada in the southwest suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.
Image:Cicada Albuquerque NM.JPG|Putative cicada in Elena Gallegos park, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Image:Tibicen_chloromera_2005.jpg|Imagining Tibicen chloromera, Metuchen, NJ.
Image:Cicada moult.JPG|Moulting cicada, Tevose, PA.
Image:Cicada82307.jpeg|Cicada on brick house, Latrobe, PA.
Image:Ecdise.jpg|Cicada after moulting, Atlantic Forest, Brazil.
Image:Cicada Aust.jpg|Cicada, Moonbi, Northern NSW, Australia.
Image:La Fortuna.jpg|Cicada, La Fortuna, Costa Rica
Further Information
Get more info on 'Cicada'.
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