Lyristes plebejus (Scopoli, 1763)

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

Lyristes plebejus (Scopoli, 1763)

Distribution

General distribution: Southern Europe: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia ( Novak and Wagner 1962, Schedl 1986, Joermann and Schneider 1987), France, Greece, Italy (including Sicily), Montenegro (Trilar & Gogala, unpublished data), North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia ( Petrik 1958, Janković 1975), Slovenia, Spain; Central Europe: Austria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Switzerland; Eastern Europe: Russia (South European Russia), Ukraine; Middle East: Iran; Transcaucasia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (all data except for the countries with the citation in brackets are summarised by Duffels and van der Laan 1985 and Sanborn 2014).

There is a doubtful citation of Lyristes plebejus for Germany ( Nast 1972, Wolf 1974, Nast 1987, Lodos and Kalkandelen 1981, Quartau and Fonseca 1988), as it is not listed in the latest overview of fauna ( Nickel et al. 2016). There are also doubtful records for Corsica ( Servadei 1967, Nast 1972, Boulard 1992b, Guglielmino et al. 2000) and Sardinia ( Servadei 1967, Nast 1972, Boulard 1992b, Quartau and Fonseca 1988, Guglielmino et al. 2000), as Lyristes plebejus was never found in recent fieldwork with bioacoustic methods on these Islands ( Puissant and Sueur 2001; Thomas Hertach, personal communication).

Lyristes plebejus is on the eastern side of Rechinger's line in the Aegean Sea replaced by Lyristes gemellus Boulard, 1988 ( Simões and Quartau 2013, Gogala and Trilar 2014), which is bioacoustically proven on the east Aegean Islands: Lesbos, Chios, Ikaria, Samos and Rhodes ( Simões and Quartau 2013, Gogala and Trilar 2014), as well as Kalymnos and Kos (Trilar & Gogala, unpublished data) and further east in Turkey (Provinces of Aydin, Antalya and Mersin) (Trilar & Gogala, unpublished data) and Cyprus ( Simões and Quartau 2013). Lyristes plebejus is also cited in literature for Israel ( Schedl 1999) and Syria ( Lodos and Kalkandelen 1981), but in our opinion, Lyristes gemellus should also be distributed here, but this assumption needs to be bioacoustically investigated.

Distribution in Bulgaria: In Bulgaria, data are available for 76 localities (Fig. 9 ). In literature, we found the data for Bulgaria in Yoakimov (1909), Sander (1985) and Háva 2016. Bairyamova (1992) lists the species for Rhodope Mts. and Nedyalkov (1908) for northern and southern Bulgaria, with the remark that it does not occur above the altitude limit of oak distribution. Arabadzhiev (1963) considers the species as a pest. The species is also listed in overviews by Nast (1972), Nast (1987), but without exact location information for Bulgaria.

In Bulgaria, Lyristes plebejus is distributed all over the country with the known data in eastern Danubian Plane, northern lowest hills of the Pre-Balkan, eastern Sub-Balkan valleys, Ograzhden-Vlachina Mts., Sandanski-Petrich Middle Struma valley, Pirin Mt., Dabrash-Batak western Rhodope Mts., Prespa-Chernatitsa western Rhodope Mts., Upper Thracian Plain, Tundzha-Burgas Valley, eastern Rhodope Mts., Haskovo Hills Land and Strandzha Mt. (Fig. 9 ).

In this survey, the majority of the population was found between sea level and 800 m (93% of the population) (Fig. 10 ). At the highest altitude, the male specimen from the SOFM collection was recorded, which was found in Chepelare by Vl. Nonev (1105 m a.s.l.).

Notes

Acoustic behaviour: The song was described by Popov (1969), Popov (1975), Joermann and Schneider (1987), Claridge et al. (1979), Boulard (1995), Gogala (2002), Sueur et al. (2004), Puissant (2012) and Mehdipour et al. 2015. The sound reception of this species has recently been investigated by Sueur et al. (2010).

The song of Lyristes plebejus has a very complex structure (Fig. 11 ). It is a continuous repetition of phrases (duration 7-30 s) without a pause lasting for many minutes. Each phrase can be divided into three parts. The first two parts consist of a fast sequence of short echemes (SE) and the third of a steady buzz ( Gogala 2002, Joermann and Schneider 1987). In the first part, which extends over half of the phrase, 30-240 SE are repeated without pause. This is followed by the transition in the second part, which consists of 25-80 SE, separated by intervals of 15-30 ms. The echeme period (85 ms) is constant over almost the entire first two phrases. Finally, the transition occurs in the third part (duration 1.5-3.0 s) which is characterised by the loss of the echeme structure and has become a steady buzz ( Joermann and Schneider 1987). In the first and second part of the phrase, there is an amplitude modulation of the echemes, which is higher in the first part than in the second part ( Joermann and Schneider 1987). The bandwidth measured 10 dB below the maximum is fairly uniform and ranges from 4.4 kHz to 8.34 kHz, but there is some variation in peak frequency between the phrases ( Joermann and Schneider 1987).

Selected sound samples of Lyristes plebejus can be found on the web pages Songs of the European singing cicadas ( Gogala 2020).

Materials: Suppl. material 2

Diagnosis

Lyristes plebejus (Fig. 8 ) is the second largest European cicada after the south-eastern European species Lyristes gemellus Boulard, 1988 and has a very loud and distinct song ( Hertach and Nagel 2013). The species occurs mainly in closed high shrubland and woodland on various plants, such as olive trees, pines, oaks, as well as on fruit trees ( Sueur et al. 2004, Drosopoulos et al. 2005, Simões and Quartau 2013). In some areas, they can be observed in large numbers singing together in a chorus ( Gogala 2002).

Figures

Figure 8. Lyristes plebejus male.

Figure 9. Map with localities of Lyristes plebejus in Bulgaria. Black - literature data, blue - data from collections, red - bioacoustic data collected in this survey.

Figure 10. Altitudinal distribution of Lyristes plebejus. The percentage of the recorded localities is displayed in 200 - metre altitude zones.

Figure 11. Calling song of Lyristes plebejus. (A) spectrogram and oscillogram of one phrase of the calling song; (B) oscillogram of the last part of the phrase and beginning of a new one corresponding to the inverted window in (A).