New species of Cicadetta montana complex of species has been described.
These are C. olympica, found on Mt. Olymbos and C. kissavi discovered on Mt. Kissavos, Greece
A new species of mountain cicada has been described from Greece by M. Gogala, S. Drosopoulos and T. Trilar.
The presentation of this species has been updated according to the paper by Sueur & Puissant 2007
This species, closely related to the C. cerdaniensis has been desribed by Sueur & Puissant 2007. Previous records of C. cerdaniensis from Central and Eastern Europe should be according to the authors ascribed to the new C. cantilatrix!
Purpose and Content of this site
During last decades it became evident, that the song patterns of singing cicadas are very species specific and enable us to detect a presence of most species in a habitat without seeing and collecting them, just by recording and analyzing their acoustic emissions. In addition to this, one can recognize the hidden, morphologically inconspicuous species by analyzing and comparing their songs. As it is well known, in singing cicadas only males have characteristic sound producing organs - tymbals and are able to produce loud and species specific sound signals. Nevertheless, females of some species can answer to the courtship signals of males by short wing clicks. Similarly, males of some species use wing clicking as additional sound producing mechanism.
Oscillogram and spectrogram of the calling song of Cicadatra querula, produced by Amadeus Pro software.: above - spectrogram, below - oscillogram.
Frequency spectrum of the same sequence of the Cicadatra querula calling song.
Oscilograms, spectrograms and spectra
On our pages we offer samples of songs for comparison in MP4 format. For graphical comparison of song patterns we are providing also oscillograms (c), spectrograms - (b)(also called sonograms or sonagrams) what means a 3-dimensional presentation of sound intensity in a frequency versus time plain. In some occasions average frequency spectra are presented as well (see Figure). For this purpose we originally used Canary 1.2.4 (Cornell University) and recently Amadeus Pro software (© Hairersoft) for Mac computers. SnapzProX software (© Ambrosia Software) has been used to produce QuickTime mov files and for conversion to MP4 the MPEG Streamclip 1.9 ©.