Cicadatra hyalina (Fabricius, 1798)

Trilar, Tomi, Gjonov, Ilia & Gogala, Matija, 2020, Checklist and provisional atlas of singing cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) of Bulgaria, based on bioacoustics, Biodiversity Data Journal 8, pp. 54424-54424 : 54424

Cicadatra hyalina (Fabricius, 1798)

Distribution

General distribution: Southern Europe: Greece, North Macedonia, Romania; Eastern Europe: Russia (South European Russia), Ukraine; Middle East: Iran, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Turkey; Transcaucasia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia; Central Asia: Turkmenistan (summarised by Duffels and van der Laan 1985 and Sanborn 2014).

Distribution in Bulgaria: In Bulgaria, data are known for four localities from eastern Danubian Plane, Sandanski-Petrich Middle Struma valley and Upper Thracian Plain (Fig. 18 ). In literature, we found the data in Nedyalkov (1908), who cites Cicadatra hyalina for Sadovo and Pazardzhik. One female specimen is stored in the BFUS collection and was collected by the third author in Harsovo. During this study, it was recorded and collected at Kaliakra Cape in steppe habitats close to the Black Sea coast (Fig. 18 ). All these sites are located between 60 and 260 m a.s.l. (Fig. 19 ).

Notes

Acoustic behaviour: Four types of songs are registered in Cicadatra hyalina : continuous calling song, intermittent calling song, courtship song and alarm song (rivalry song or distress call) ( Popov 1975, Boulard 1995).

Continuous calling song (Fig. 20 ) consists of a sound with constant amplitude, which is up to several minutes long and resembles a high-frequency buzz ( Popov 1975) with the frequency range 8.3 to 12.5 kHz and the peak frequency around 11.0 kHz ( Boulard 1995, Popov et al. 1991).

The intermittent calling song resembles a rumbling noise and consists of echemes of 0.8-1.6 s in length and the interecheme periods of approximately the same length (Fig. 21 ). Echemes consist of successive pulse sequences with frequencies of 47-60 Hz (Fig. 20B). Exceptions are the first few pulses of the echeme, which follow at intervals 1.5-2.0 times longer than the next ( Popov 1975). The frequency range of short echemes has a relatively low and wide band between 3 and 11 kHz ( Popov 1975, Boulard 1995), with two peak frequencies at 4.5 kHz and 10.5 kHz ( Popov et al. 1991).

The courtship song is a sequence of pulses that is regularly repeated at a frequency of 54-59 Hz. It has a similar rumbling sound as the intermittent calling song with the same spectral characteristics, but it lacks the segmentation in echemes and is much quieter than the intermittent calling song ( Popov 1975).

Selected sound samples of Cicadatra hyalina are available on the web pages Songs of the European singing cicadas ( Gogala 2020).

Materials: Suppl. material 4

Diagnosis

Cicadatra hyalina (Fig. 17 ) lives in hot and dry open grasslands ( Gogala et al. 2005), where it inhabits grass or low shrubs at a height of up to 1 m ( Popov 1975). Sometimes, it is even found on rocky semi-desert grasslands with very little vegetation.

Figures

Figure 17. Cicadatra hyalina male.

Figure 18. Map with localities of Cicadatra hyalina in Bulgaria. Black - literature data, blue - data from collections, red - bioacoustic data collected in this survey.

Figure 19. Altitudinal distribution of Cicadatra hyalina. The percentage of the recorded localities is displayed in 200 - metre altitude zones.

Figure 20. Continuous calling song of Cicadatra hyalina. (A) spectrogram and oscillogram of the continuous song; (B) oscillogram of the enlarged part corresponding to the inverted window in (A).

Figure 21. Intermittent calling song of Cicadatra hyalina. (A) spectrogram and oscillogram of the calling song; (B) oscillogram of one echeme corresponding to the inverted window in (A).