The Cicada : single or multiple

Scientific name: Cicadoidea

Latin name: Cicada [from Greek KICCOS (membrane) and ADO (to sing)]

Name in the “Provence” region: Cigala

It was already singing more than two million years ago.

It is abundant in the “Provence” region, but this is not its unique place of residence; in fact, its habitat is all over the world.

According to scientists', more than 4,500 species would be living in warm and moderate regions on earth.

As early as 1853, the “Dictionary of Conversation and Reading” had references for 66 species: 9 in Europe, 22 in Asia, 17 in Africa, 15 in America and 3 in New-Zealand. In France, eight species are known (it is said that 15 to 16 species would be listed in the “Provence” region).

" Lyriste plebejus " or the longest (about 2 inches) popular lyric singer, musician of the people, is common in “Provence” where it lives in pines, this is the one we can hear during summertime; the shorter (about 4/3 inches), grey cicada "Cicada orni " nicknamed "cacan", lives on olive trees; the black cicada, called "small cicada" is more difficult to find; the red cicada is "tinged with blood" and dark garnet-red; the black and yellow "pygmy cicada"; the "silver cicada" is dark red, blackish-brown and ochre; the black and red "cigalette"; the "cigalon de Provence" is black and ochre, and almost extinct.

The "Tibicen haematodes" cicada goes up to the north through the Rhone valley to Fontainebleau; "Cicadetta Montana" is the shorter (about 2/3 to 3/4 inches) cicada and is located on conifers, as far as in England. "Raiateana oulietea" discovered in 1935, at the time of a stopover with Raiatea (Leeward Islands, Archipelago of the Company) by the traveller-naturalist exemplary Edgar AUBERT Of RUE.Cinq were captured, it acted of an unknown cicada, representing not only one new species, but also, and it is much rarer, a new kind, no cicada, objectively, had not been indexed, nor even announced in French Polynesia! Large (2,05 to 2,16 inch length, for ten cm of scale) and beautiful (fore-part of a fascié or mackled turquoise green of bistre and black; dark brown abdomen carry a kind of white wax mask), it is a very spectacular insect, it thus appears that the crowned island only holds a natural originality while sheltering in its high forests and large Polynesian Cicada "Raiateana oulietea". A stamp was emitted on August 7, 1996, cost: 66 Fcfp

Their cousins in the Far East, as for example "Pomponia impératoria", can reach a bird size, their song is proportional to their sizes!