thelope.com - T. robinsonianus cicada calls in captivity

This is the result of an effort to cause a captive-moulted Tibicen robinsonianus cicada to call by using a recorded call to prompt him.

As the video begins you can hear a recording of a male T. robinsonianus calling, followed by the sound of another male T. robinsonianus fluttering its wings off-camera. The T. robinsonianus in the frame then begins to sing, after which we stopped the recorded call. This was recorded on July 25, 2010 in the late afternoon.

After a few cases like this of the cicada being prompted to call by a recording and the flutter of another cicada, he began to call spontaneously.

The audio recording of T. robinsonianus calling that you hear for the first eight seconds of this video clip is from the CD included with the book, The Songs of Insects, by Lang Elliott and Wil Hershberger, a book I highly recommend.

excerpt from thelope.com file number 10-07-25 019

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Tibicen
• robinsonianus
• cicada

[grungeguy83]

@acejackalope yea mine are still living after 7 days. i let most of them go. i have two hybrids out of the 50 i took. pruinosus x robinsoniaus. they have a very odd call if you get the chance to hear a god hybrid. theese are very easy to get but it took a chance encounter to find this species and they are only found in a half mile radious in a cemetery with ceder trees.

[acejackalope]

@grungeguy83 I just wanted to add that I picked up two robinsonianus males today and they are feeding from two potted plants - rose of Sharon and weeping mulberry.

[grungeguy83]

@acejackalope yea i have mine in a bowl of water with cloth over the water. must be you got lucky for them to call from teneral. my adults wont even sing. dorsatus are another story...they will call captive all night long and if you have more than three its nonstop all night lol

[acejackalope]

@grungeguy83 Cut ends of the branches were in glass tea candle holder strips that I got at Wal-Mart. They were designed to hold four or five candles in individual indentations. I leaned the branches in the terrarium with the cut end of each branch in one of the tea candle indentations and filled the indentation with water. I then put little glass beads or pebbles into the indentation to prevent cicadas from falling into the water. Indentations may have to be refilled more than once per day.

[grungeguy83]

@acejackalope thats amazing you got them to live that long. i have 50 of theese as i type in a tub with pine branches in water. whats your methed. i see your using white swamp oak branches but are they in water or what. i want to get them on vidio as well

[acejackalope]

@grungeguy83 I suppose that depends on what you define as my area. For example, I live in Hutchinson, KS, but T. tremulus lives only in the surrounding county of Reno, not in the city of Hutchinson as far as I can tell. I don't know if B. venosa and C. calliope live here as I've never caught one, but literature indicates they should. I don't know if we have Magicicada as I wasn't hoime much in May/June of 1998. I'll count the tibicens in another response.

[grungeguy83]

@acejackalope how many species can you list in your area greg? is the name right? i documented 18 so far includding the non tibicens. must give you a thumbs up for your method of kepping robinsonius alive. mine only made it 5 days with one making it 7

[acejackalope]

@grungeguy83 They eclosed late the night of July 15, 2010, and I kept them on fresh cut oak branches with the ends of the branches in a water reservoir. These were changed daily. They lived at least ten days, which is when I let them go. However, some T. figuratus I got the same night only lived five days and I never heard one sing. So, the robinsonianus experiment succeeded while the figuratus one failed.

[grungeguy83]

@acejackalope hold on lol...you were able to keep them alive this long!!? i have tried mesh bags on trees ect...whats your method if i might ask? i can get 100s of theese in one area thats it

[acejackalope]

@grungeguy83 I captured them as nymphs and kept them safe and fed until I was able to coax them to sing, using recordings. Then, I let them go as there was nothing more I needed from them. I really enjoyed those guys. It would be pretty hard to capture adults as I usually hear them high in trees.