Final Survey Work of the Season

Final Survey Work of the Season

Man, it really seemed like a short season as far as studying Cicadas go. Tibicen lyricens stopped calling here in Massachusetts around the beginning of September. Tibicen canicularis hasn't been calling for about a week now but it has been unusually cool the last week or so.

Fortunately on September 5th I managed to make it to Connecticut one more time. Below is my account of that day.

Two Male Tibicen lyricens Snagged!

On September 5th I made one final trip to Connecticut to see if I could continue to track Tibicen chloromera's Tibicen tibicen's northern most range. Unfortunately, even in Connecticut there didn't seem to be that many Tibicen chloromera's Tibicen tibicen's cicadas calling. However, I wasn't deterred in the least because I wanted to see if I could capture some other species of cicadas using my friend Mike's fancy net with all the extension poles.

This worked like a charm. I found myself at this nursery in Northern Connecticut and thanks to the big net I was able to snag two male Tibicen lyricens.

The behavior of these Tibicen lyricens in the wild are so much different than Cicadas that have been captured during the eclose (molting from nymph) process.

The alarm squawks that these male cicadas made when captured was very loud as opposed to male cicadas that I obtained during molting. Check out the male timbal development in Cicada Sexual Development - of the Cicadas 101 section.

Click the link below to hear the alarm squawk of the above Tibicen lyricen.

Tibicen lyricen alarm squawk.

Other Unusual Male Tibicen lyricen Calling Behaviors Observed.

Calling when flying - One thing I hadn't noticed before but due to these nursery trees being not as tall as a full grown tree, I was able to observe these cicadas calling relatively close to the ground. I observed one male calling while walking up and down the main trunk of the tree and flicking it's wings. Then all-of-a-sudden, it flew to an adjacent tree while still calling during its flight!! This is truly an amazing observed behavior. I wonder if this happens a lot with Tibicen lyricen males.

Want to know what the call of a male Tibicen lyricen sounds like? Click the below thumbnail to watch a brief movie. Unfortunately, you can't see the cicada in the video but you can hear it.

Calling even when netted - Another male was netted in the middle of it calling for a mate. The unusual thing about this is that the male was still calling for a female even while in the net! Maybe it didn't realize that it was captured. Once it was in the net, I slowly lowered the net down and it called all the way until I had the net on the ground and grabbed it within the net, then it started to squawk like crazy.

Males Will Try To Mate With Other Males

This is another behavior that I have not observed with male cicadas that I have captured during the molting process. I decided to put both these captured males in the same jar. This was a big mistake because one of the males kept on trying to mate with the second male that I captured.

Unfortunately the aggression of one male trying to mate with the other male stressed the second male so much that it ended up dying shortly after I returned home.

Perhaps the males that I have captured while molting did not fully sexually develop and that is the reason why these males never exhibited this behavior. In captivity cicadas are very difficult to keep alive longer than 7 to 10 days.