Which group do cicadas belong to? Singing cicadas: description of the insect, habitat, nutrition, life cycle. Chemical control methods

Class - Insects

Detachment - Proboscis

Suborder - cycads

Family - Jassidae

Basic data:

DIMENSIONS

Length: some up to 15 mm, on average 2-10 mm.

Wings: Two pairs.

Eyes: complex.

Coloring: green, this masks the cicadas (see photo of the insect) on the leaves; some are very brightly colored.

BREEDING

Mating period: end of summer.

Eggs: set aside in small piles, attach them to plants.

Incubation period: depends on temperature, sometimes development occurs in winter.

LIFE STYLE

Habits: kept in groups.

What does it eat: plant juices.

Lifespan: up to a year.

RELATED SPECIES

More than 5,000 species belong to the cicada family. About 300 species of this family live in Central Europe.

Cicadas are one of the most common insects. They are found almost all over the world. They stay in huge groups. A large number of these insects can devastate an entire field. Like bedbugs, cicadas belong to the order of homoptera.

PECULIARITIES

There are less than five thousand species of leafhoppers in the world. All of them, like other representatives of the order of the Homoptera, go through an incomplete cycle of transformation in their development. Most species of cicadas have a small, elongated body and green coloration, but there are also quite brightly colored species.

Cicadas are very agile and extremely mobile insects. They can immediately quickly run away to the side or jump a considerable distance. Thanks to their long wings, cicadas are also pretty good at flying. Cicadas do not look like their distant relatives - aphids. Rather, these insects are united by the way in which they consume plant juices. In regions especially rich in food, there are entire swarms of insects of this species. Different kinds real cicadas prefer different plants.

LIFE CYCLE

Cicadas are relatives of song cicadas, which are known for their loud "singing" heard at night in the crowns of trees in tropical and subtropical forests. Only 50 years ago, zoologists established that ordinary cicadas can "sing", but their "voices" are not perceived by the human ear unless special equipment is used.

With the help of the chirping of cicadas, they attract a partner. Individuals of both sexes during the mating season meet precisely because of "singing". Moreover, the "singing" female tries not to move, since the male is just going to her call. After mating, the female lays eggs on plants.

First, she makes an incision on the plant with the help of the ovipositor, and then places the eggs in it. Here the eggs spend the whole winter. Their development begins only next spring.

Cicadas are insects with an incomplete transformation cycle, that is, their larvae do not make cocoons. The eggs hatch into larvae - wingless miniature copies of adult insects. They start eating right away. In the process of growth, the larva molts five or six times and only after that develops into an adult insect (imago). Adult insects go in search of a partner, and the cycle of development repeats again. Cicadas usually live a little less than a year.

WHAT DOES IT FEED

Cicadas feed on the juices of plants such as cereals, potatoes, apple trees, sugar beets or roses. These insects have a developed mouth apparatus of a piercing-sucking type. Inside the proboscis are long and sharp bristles.

The proboscis of insects are modified lips, and the bristles are modified jaws. The bristles are contained in a proboscis tube, as in a case. The bristle moves freely in the case, but cannot bend. Therefore, it easily pierces the skin of plants. Leafhopper, piercing the peel, at the same time allocates not a large number of saliva. The pressure of the liquid in the plant is so high that the juice itself flows through the proboscis and esophagus into her stomach. Due to the peculiarities of leafhopper saliva, the juice of the plant does not thicken, and, in addition, saliva facilitates the process of digestion.

Viruses that cause various diseases in plants can live in the saliva of leafhoppers for a long time. Many leafhoppers carry dangerous viral plant diseases. The banded leafhopper is a vector for oat disease, and the ribbed leafhopper is a known vector for nightshade trunk disease. Numerous colonies of leafhoppers are serious enemies for agriculture.

LOOKING FOR THE CICCADES

Cicadas are numerous in summer, when most plants bloom and prepare for fruiting, so they can become food for these insects. Shortly after the appearance of the first leaves, leafhoppers also appear. You can watch them walk, jump and fly from one plant to another. One has only to shake the plant, so that the frightened leafhoppers first fall to the ground, and then jump or fly away. In summer, on grass stalks, you can often see white lumps resembling small piles of foam. If you carefully unfold such a pile, then inside you can see the larva of the common pennitsa. The foam is the house that the larva managed to build with "its own feet".

• A small pink leafhopper that lives in Europe and North America, with the help of saliva dissolves cellulose, and then sucks out the juice. In addition to roses, she feeds on fruit trees and currants.
• Leafhoppers “sing” during the mating season with the help of an organ resembling a cymbal. A special muscle contracts and pulls the membrane into the cymbal. When the muscle returns to its original position, the membrane straightens, its change leads to the formation of sound. This can be repeated from 170 to 480 times per second .
• The cicadas fly into the light. In India, people catch rice cicadas that fly to the light of street lamps and sell them as bird food.

CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES

Wings: pair. At rest, they are stacked on top of each other so that they form a “roof”. The first pair is denser at the base, turns into a thin membrane at the ends, the second pair is thin.

Coloring: varies by species and gender. Some species are quite brightly colored.

Mouth apparatus: the proboscis is of a piercing-sucking type, located on the bottom of the head. The upper and lower jaws have turned into thin piercing bristles that serve to pierce the skin of the plant. The grooved proboscis is hidden in a depression at the bottom of the mouth opening.

WHERE Dwells

Cicadas are found in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions. They live almost all over the world, in places where they find a sufficient amount of plant food.

PROTECTION AND PRESERVATION

Many species of true leafhoppers are considered pests. Despite attempts at extermination, leafhoppers are still quite numerous.

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On a warm summer night, the space fills with grasshoppers, cicadas. These insects share many similarities in lifestyle and feeding habits. The ability to make specific sounds is characteristic of all the listed types of insects. But experienced summer residents should understand how crickets and cicadas differ, because each species carries a direct danger to the crop.

External differences

The opinion that cicadas are one and the same is fundamentally erroneous. Crickets are representatives of the order Orthoptera, and cicadas are classified as Hymenoptera. So, the former have two pairs of small wings, and the flying organ of the latter is much more weighty. Hymenoptera have 2 pairs of wings of different lengths. The veins are clearly visible on them.

Representatives of Hymenoptera are much larger in size, especially with open wings. They reach 5 cm. Common cricket rarely outgrows a length of 2.7 cm.

Interesting!

Despite the same number of legs, the hind legs are more developed in cicadas. With their help, they are able to jump long distances.

The question of what is the difference between a cicada and a cricket will not arise if we consider in detail the photos of both species. Straight-winged representative of dark color with a short body and wings. Cicadas have a small body and elongated wings. The color of insects can vary greatly depending on the habitat and species.

What are they talking about

Orthoptera and Hymenoptera make characteristic sounds to attract females. Everyone has their own sound apparatus. Due to its development in crickets, insects have a wider sound range. By their chirping, one can judge not only the mating process. Insects make sounds during the protection of their territory.

To listen to the chirping of crickets, it is enough to leave the city. They can sing at any time of the day until they wait for their female. Cicadas need warm weather. The hotter it is outside, the more actively they sing. Therefore, the chirping of these insects is more likely to be heard on a hot summer day.

The differences between crickets and cicadas can be found in the way they chirp. The acoustic organ in crickets is represented by a special arrangement of elytra. The principle of their operation is similar to playing the violin. The elytra have a large number of veins and folds, which are arranged in a chaotic manner. During a blow against each other, certain vibrations are created that the human ear can hear.

Their opponents' ability to play music is also their weapon. The sound volume of insects can even reach 100 dB.

Interesting!

The chirping of some cicadas that do not live in Russia can harm the eardrums of humans and wild animals. Therefore, many predators try not to approach areas of large concentrations of these hymenoptera.

Characteristic sounds are heard due to the presence of special membranes located at the base of the abdomen. Chirring is formed as a result of vibration of the acoustic organ.

It is possible to determine who is chirping: cicadas or crickets by the strength of the sound. For the former, the chirping force can even drown out a person’s loud conversation and they can be recognized at a distance of about 800 m. The latter have a more subtle, but multifaceted sound.

Reproduction features

The difference lies in the methods of reproduction. The male cycad dies immediately after fertilization. But crickets do not have this feature. They even hold the record for the number of matings per unit of time.

Straight-winged cricket females, after fertilization, pull out minks in the ground and lay their eggs there. Female cicadas for their offspring make cuts in the stems of plants or their basal part.

Thus, outwardly it is impossible to confuse these two representatives of insects. It is very difficult to see them with your own eyes in nature. Musicians are afraid of people and at the slightest approach they try to hide.

Many of us have heard crickets singing in the evening in the garden or in nature. But crickets and grasshoppers are not the only representatives of singing insects. Today we will talk about cicadas, their appearance and lifestyle.

What is a cicada

Cicadas are large insects found all over the world. Science knows about two and a half thousand species of these insects, most of which live in countries with a hot climate, on European part there are only eighteen of them. Consider the scientific classification of insects:

Kinds

In our latitudes, two types of song cicadas are common: ordinary and mountain, we will consider the features of their appearance and life below.

Did you know? The image of the insect was often used in poetry, in fine arts, he was depicted on coins and objects of decoration and everyday life. For example, on an ancient Greek coin, a singing cicada is depicted on one side.

Appearance

The “common” species is also called the “ash leaf sucker”: it has a predominantly black body color, head and back with yellow splashes. Body length with wings - no more than five centimeters.

The mountain cicada is smaller: the length of its body with wings is no more than 2.5 cm. The color is very dark, almost black, there are blotches of rich orange.

Head

The ash leaf sucker has a wide head, much wider than the front of the back. In the mountain species, the head, on the contrary, is much narrower than the peculiar neck.

On the sides of the head of both specimens there are two large eyes of a complex structure, in the central part there are three simple ones, forming a kind of triangle. Presumably, due to this structure and the number of eyes, insects have excellent vision, covering a large area.

Antennae with sensitive bristles and a proboscis are located in front of the "muzzle".

Wings and legs

Both species have transparent wings. When folded, they completely cover the hind wings, as they are much longer. On the entire surface of the wing there are dark or colored veins in the color inherent in the species.

The structure of the legs differs only in the number of spines on the hips: the common specimen has two spines, the mountain one has three spines. The femoral part of the legs is much thicker than the lower leg, which has cylindrical shape. In total, individuals have three pairs of legs, ending in tenacious claws.

Abdomen

The abdomen in both species is dense, thickened in females in the lower part, where the organ for laying eggs is located. With its help, the females pierce the thin wood or green tissue of the plant and attach the masonry. In males, the copulatory organ is also located there, with the help of which they fertilize the female.

cicada life

Insects are considered the longest-lived representatives of their class - some species live up to seventeen years.

Did you know? In the tomb of the Frankish king Childeric I, gold jewelry with garnet inserts in the form of cicadas was found.

Habitat

Ash leaf sucker prefers the southern latitudes of the Mediterranean, Crimea, the Caucasus and Transcaucasia. The subtropical climate of these territories with its hot and dry summers is suitable for insects.

The species of mountain individuals is distributed over a wider area: in addition to the above regions, the insect lives in Russia, western and northern Europe, and in Asian countries. The species is accustomed to changing temperatures and higher humidity.

Insects spend time in open to the sun, well-heated places:

• forest edges;
• steppes and meadows;
• green terraces on the mountain slopes.

Food

By piercing the delicate bark or grassy tissue of plants with a sharp proboscis, cicadas suck out the juice flowing down the stem. In the air, the juice hardens, turning into a kind of porridge, which is also nutritious.

Lifestyle

Settling on the branches of plants, during the day the insects bask in the sun, feed by flying from bush to bush or tree (the structure of the wings allows them to fly well). Contrary to popular belief about the nocturnal singing of cicadas, this phenomenon is rather an exception. Insects emit unusual sounds to attract the attention of females in the daytime. At night, only some species sing, which in this way try to protect themselves from predators. By the way, each subspecies has its own timbre and character of sound. Group "singing" is intended to prevent predators from recognizing a particular sound source.

Life cycle and reproduction

After mating, the female, piercing the bark of trees (ordinary) or stems of grasses and green shoots (mountain), lays eggs in the resulting gap. The number of eggs in a clutch can reach six hundred pieces.

After a month and a half, the larvae will hatch - thick, clumsy individuals with a hard protective shell and a burrowing type of paws. For their own safety, offspring burrow into the soil, closer to the root systems of plants, the juices of which will feed them. Cicadas lead an underground way of life for quite a long time, until the rudiments of wings appear: an ordinary species - from two to four years, a mountain species - up to six years.

To become an adult, the larva crawls to the surface, where, climbing onto a bush or tree, it molts. After molting, the body of a newly-made adult has not yet grown strong; it will take about six more days to acquire a hard cover. Adult specimens live for about three months.

singing insects

Not only males sing, but also females of many species, although the sounds they make are not audible to our ears. Let's figure out exactly how cicadas sing.

Small paired pads located on the inside of the abdomen under the back pair of legs, called cymbals, emit sound impulses. The insect rhythmically contracts the abdominal muscle, and the cymbals emit clicks so fast that they seem to be a single melody. The sound of the cymbals can be heard at a distance of eight hundred meters.

Role in nature and in human life

Cicadas in nature are an important link in the food chain: they are food for birds, lizards, hedgehogs, foxes, but this is not the only one. important role. By feeding on plants, insects can be both beneficial and harmful, for example, in agriculture. Let's consider further in more detail.

Useful and harmful properties

Given the omnivorous nature of individuals, they can cause great damage to cereals, vegetables, fruits and berries, and even melons and flowers. Insects are equated with pests such as thrips. By sucking out all the juices of plants, they reduce yields, or even completely destroy crops.

At the same time, in wild nature with the participation of insects, the number of plants is regulated. In addition, insects are considered a soil-forming link in the ecosystem: when they die, they saturate the soil with humus.

Cicada breeding

In many countries of Asia, Africa, in some cities of the USA, Australia there are farms for breeding edible insects, including cicadas.

Important!Winged pests carry various diseases from plant to plant.

Catching a pair for your own breeding, in principle, is not difficult: if you catch it with your hands, then you need to grab it on the wings, pressing them to the back, but it’s easier to wield a net.

Content Features

Insects are kept in boxes with a fine mesh for ventilation, and individuals at different stages of development live separately. For a small farm, plastic containers with holes made for ventilation are suitable.

Tells entomologist, candidate of biological sciences Dmitry Belov.

Grasshopper

These are the most common "chirrers". Grasshoppers live almost throughout Russia, except for the highlands and regions of the Far North. Most species are hunters, patiently waiting for their prey to arrive. In this, the grasshopper looks like a praying mantis - it also, hiding, watches for the victim, and then grabs it with strong forepaws and powerful jaws. Sometimes the grasshopper moves with quiet steps, feeling the road in front of him with his antennae - as soon as they touch another insect, the hunter quickly catches it. In choosing an object for a snack, he does not disdain anyone, even his relatives. Most often, aphids, hairless caterpillars, young beetles and fillies are found in its jaws. If there is not enough animal food, the grasshopper can also switch to vegetation, eating the buds and leaves of shrubs, various cereals. Only a few species are completely herbivorous, such as the greenhouse grasshopper, which damages flowers in greenhouses.

So it turns out that the children's song is telling a lie: the grasshopper will “touch” the goat, and is not particularly friendly with flies. And, by the way, it can easily bite through the skin on the fingers of a person who inadvertently grabbed it. Moreover, he will burp a drop of his own blood into the wound, which will burn like fire. Handle him with care!

Built-in violin

The grasshopper performs incredibly beautiful melodies with the help of its front wings. With a jagged vein on the left wing, like a bow, the grasshopper leads along the "grater" on the right wing, and from it the vibrations are transmitted to a special vibrating membrane - "mirror".

The artist's "track list" includes long piercing invocative songs, short warning trills to rivals and a quiet squeaky ballad addressed to the lady of the heart. The male does not just play it - sometimes he also dances, swaying from side to side during the performance.

The organs of hearing in grasshoppers are located ... on the shins of the front legs. Inside, the “ears” are very complicated, but on the outside they look like membranes or narrow slits.

Here is the jump!

The grasshopper is a world famous jumper: the height of his jump is ten, and the length is twenty times his own height.

locust

It is possible that a locust or a filly gives a concert in your garden. This is the closest relative of grasshoppers, found almost everywhere, with the exception of the coldest regions. She only eats plants.

Locusts have become infamous for their monstrous appetite and ability to gather in billions of swarms. Every day, the locust eats plant food as much as it weighs itself. It would seem that this is not much, only 2 g, but a flock of a billion insects is already absorbing 2000 tons! In Russia, locusts live in the lower reaches of the Volga, Ural, Don, Terek.

Filly (small species of locust) are more modest in their appetites, but are found everywhere. They can be seen even in the center of a large city.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

What does she play

The sound apparatus of the locust is not complicated. This is a long row of knobs on the hips of the hind legs and a thick vein on the front wing. By quickly moving its foot along the wing, the insect makes jerky chirring sounds. The melody changes from ringing at noon to quiet and hoarse at dawn and dusk.

Grasshopper or locust?

The grasshopper has long whiskers (they are 4 times longer than the body), the locust has short ones. The female grasshopper has a saber-shaped ovipositor at the end of the abdomen, while the locust does not. The grasshopper has a pointed head at the bottom, and a short body for greater maneuverability. The locust has a rounded and blunt head, and an elongated body for better aerodynamics. Grasshoppers are sedentary, while swarms of locusts fly thousands of kilometers.

Cicada

If the song comes from above, then most likely it is performed by a cicada, one of worst enemies plants. Adult insects suck the juices from the leaves of grasses, shrubs and trees. The larvae hide in the ground and damage the roots.

Southern cicadas are large (body length - 2-6.5 cm, wingspan - up to 18 cm), and small cicadas live in Central Russia and to the north - no more than 1 cm tall.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

The body of the cicada is wide and short, on the sides there are two pairs of transparent wings. The head is broad, big eyes bulging. The legs are strong, but the cicadas cannot jump high, and they fly so-so. Most of the time they prefer to walk.

To the touch, the cicada is much tougher than it looks, and its wings are so dense that it feels like they can cut themselves. But in fact they are harmless to humans.

Both male and female cicadas chirp, although the latter do so extremely rarely. But the males, wanting to attract the "ladies", announce the air with a very loud song - up to 100 decibels. Sometimes it can be heard from a distance of 800 meters.

Powerful vocals

The cicadas' loud songs help keep predators at bay. In the deserts of North America, the cicada chorus is so powerful that the eardrums of man cannot stand it! What then happens to predators, whose hearing is much more subtle? None of them will dare to approach the singing cluster of cicadas.

Where is the voice from?

The cicada's voice apparatus is a very clever device. Simplified, it can be described as follows. On the lower part of the body, she has membranes ("cymbals"). With the help of special muscles, the cicada can strain them and relax them sharply. Rapid vibrations generate sound, which is amplified and modified by a special chamber in the insect's body. By the same principle, sounds are made by a tin can with a convex bottom, if it is alternately pressed with a finger and released again.

“The jumping dragonfly sang red summer ...” You probably recognized these first lines of Krylov’s famous fable. But few people know that the famous fabulist had in mind not a dragonfly at all, but a cicada - one of the most vociferous insects on the planet. The singing of these hemipterans was revered by the ancient Greeks and Buddhists of the Far East. Unfortunately, this is the only advantage noted by people. The cicada insect is a dangerous agricultural pest.

Appearance of insects

Cicadas are large insects. The body length of most species reaches 5 cm, while some tropical representatives grow up to 15 cm. The head of the cicadas is short. If you look closely, in the photo of a cicada insect you can see 5 eyes: 2 large on the sides and 3 small, forming a triangle on the crown. It is believed that these insects have excellent eyesight, so they notice enemies from a long distance.

Cicadas have two pairs of wings, with the anterior pair noticeably longer than the posterior. The wings are most often transparent, but in some species they are brightly colored, while in others they are black. The belly of the insect is large and thick; in males it passes into the copulatory apparatus, and in females into the ovipositor. Also, males differ from females in the presence of a vocal apparatus located behind the hind limbs on the underside of the metathorax.

Features of life and behavior

The number of cicadas reaches 500 species. The chirping insect lives on all continents except Antarctica. Most often, cicadas are found in tropical and subtropical countries. There are many of them in India, South America and the Mediterranean countries.

Cicadas live on bushes and trees. Although they can fly, they prefer to lead a calm, even lazy lifestyle. Males wake up only in the hot time of the day and begin to chirp, luring females. The life span of song insects is quite long. The mountain cicada develops over two years, the common cicada lives for 4 years, and the representative of the North American entomofauna, the periodic cicada, for as long as 17 years.

Cicadas feed exclusively plant food. Moreover, the diet of different stages of insects is somewhat different: the larvae feed on the roots of plants, and the adults feed on plant juices. In spite of good vision, cicadas are often preyed upon by predatory insects. The main enemy is considered to be an earthen wasp, which hunts cicadas and feeds their offspring with them.

Reproduction and development

After mating, the females lay their eggs under the bark of trees. After a while, fat clumsy larvae emerge from the eggs. They have a solid smooth skin and short limbs that are adapted to digging the soil. Before turning into adults, the larvae live in the ground for several years.

Young growth feeds first on the stems, then on the roots of plants. The larvae quickly gain weight and molt several times. After that, they pupate, develop wings and turn into adult insects.

Love songs

Songbirds are called cicadas because of their unique chirping. When one male begins to sing his serenade, others immediately begin to sing along with him. Such a chorus of cicadas can drown out even the whistle of a locomotive. Singing requires a lot of energy, which insects take from solar radiation, so it is more likely to hear the voice of singers in the daytime. Sometimes, to hide from predators, males chirp at dusk.

The structure of the vocal apparatus

The vocal apparatus has three cavities: two lateral and one median. Inside the median there are two pairs of membranes: folded and shiny, similar to mirrors. The middle cavity functions as a resonator. The lateral ones open outward thanks to the holes, and the eardrum is located on the inner wall. A special muscle is attached to it, the contraction and relaxation of which leads to the oscillation of this membrane. These vibrations emit a metallic ringing, which, with the help of resonance in the middle cavity, turns into a loud piercing sound.

Cicadas are excellent singers, but, unfortunately, they are dangerous pests cultivated plants. This is due to the nature of nutrition at various stages of insect development. We already know that the larvae eat the roots, while the adults eat the soft parts of the plant. Therefore, the defeat of crops occurs with a vengeance.

Young larvae eat the stems and lower leaves of plants. After the first lines, the nymphs begin to amaze upper leaves, basal part of the stem and roots. Adult insects continue their evil mission, devouring not only the leaves and soft stems, but even the bark.

Almost everything destroys cicadas:

• cereal crops;
• legumes;
• most of the vegetable crops;
• sugar and starch plants;
• oilseeds;
• melons;
• grape;
• berry bushes;
• roses and other ornamental plants.

Cicadas are classified as sucking pests because of their way of feeding. Both larvae and adults pierce the thick skin of plants with their sharp proboscis and inject a special secret inside. The insects then attach themselves to the plant and drink the cell sap. Where the meal took place, light spots appear, which gradually merge and expand, hitting a large area. Over time, the plant loses its color and fades. If we add to this the violation of mineral metabolism due to damage to the roots, then we can understand why cicadas are considered the cause of significant crop loss.

Cicada: Video