Cicadetta brevipennis s. lat. Fieber, 1876

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

Cicadetta brevipennis s. lat. Fieber, 1876

Distribution

General distribution (only acoustically-validated data): Southern Europe: Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia; Central Europe: Austria, Hungary (summarised by Hertach et al. 2016).

Distribution in Bulgaria: During our research, Cicadetta brevipennis s. lat. was found for the first time in Bulgaria and some of the song recordings were used in the research of Hertach et al. (2016). The species was found at 33 localities in the eastern Danubian Plane, southern Lower Mountain Pre-Balkan, southern Lower Mountain Pre-Balkan, southern Balkan Mts., Pirin Mt., Tundzha-Burgas Valley, eastern Rhodope Mts. and Strandzha Mt. (Fig. 39 ).

In this survey, the majority of the population was found between sea level and 600 m (97% of the population) (Fig. 40 ). It was also recorded at Tvarditshki Prohod on Eleno-Tvarditshka Planina (1079 m a.s.l.), which is extremely high for this species.

Notes

Acoustic behaviour: The song was described by Gogala and Trilar (1999), Gogala (2002), Gogala and Trilar (2004), Trilar and Holzinger (2004), Gogala (2006), Trilar et al. (2006a) and Hertach et al. (2016).

The calling song (Fig. 41 ) is a repetitive pattern of a long echeme (duration 4.2 ± 3.3 s) increasing in intensity, followed after a short interval (duration 0.05 s) by a short and loud echeme (duration not exceeding 0.05 s) ( Boulard 1995, Gogala 2002, Gogala and Trilar 2004). The next long and short echeme sequence follows after a pause of 1.1 ± 0.3 s ( Hertach et al. 2016). The dominant frequency is 14.6 ± 0.8 kHz ( Hertach et al. 2016).

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

Materials: Suppl. material 9

Diagnosis

Hertach et al. (2016) based on acoustic, morphological, molecular, ecological and spatial data of Cicadetta brevipennis s. lat. (Fig. 38 ) from Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania recognised five lineages. Cicadetta petryi (Schumacher, 1924) was recognised as a valid species and Cicadetta brevipennis was grouped into three subspecies. However, some populations of Cicadetta brevipennis s. lat. from Bulgaria were recognised as separate lineage and may be a completely new taxon, but the dataset was not informative enough for the conclusions ( Hertach et al. 2016). In the meantime, we have collected new data from Bulgaria and Greece and further comprehensive analysis is needed to clarify the systematics for this region.

Figures

Figure 38. Cicadetta brevipennis s. lat. male and female in copula.

Figure 39. Map with localities of Cicadetta brevipennis s. lat. in Bulgaria. Red - bioacoustic data collected in this survey.

Figure 40. Altitudinal distribution of Cicadetta brevipennis s. lat .. The percentage of the recorded localities is displayed in 200 - metre altitude zones.

Figure 41. Calling song of Cicadetta brevipennis s. lat .. (A) spectrogram and oscillogram of the three sequences of the long echeme followed by the short echeme of the calling song; (B) oscillogram of the long echeme followed by the short echeme corresponding to the inverted window in (A).