The floury baker is a species of cicada native to Australia’s eastern coastline. It is the only described species in the genus Aleeta. The common and genus name are derived from the white, flour-like filaments covering the adult body. The male has distinctive genitalia and a loud and complex call generated by the frequent buckling of ribbed tymbals.
About Aleeta curvicosta in brief
The floury baker is a species of cicada native to Australia’s eastern coastline. It is the only described species in the genus Aleeta. The common and genus name are derived from the white, flour-like filaments covering the adult body. Its body and eyes are generally brown with pale patterns including a light-coloured line along the midline of the pronotum. The male has distinctive genitalia and a loud and complex call generated by the frequent buckling of ribbed tymbals and amplified by abdominal air sacs. Individuals typically emerge from the soil through a three-month period from late November to late February, and can be encountered until May. The species is found on a wide variety of trees, with some preference for species of paperbark. It is a relatively poor flier, preyed upon by ciada killer wasps and a wide range of birds. It can succumb to a cicadas-specific fungal disease. The name Aleeta is derived from Greek aleton meaning flour or meal. The floury Baker gains its common name from the appearance of having been dusted with flour, and both the vernacular terms baker and miller were in use by 1860. As of 1905 the same name was also in use for another species of Australian cicado, the white drummer. That species is now commonly referred to as the “white drummer”. With a body length of 2. 9 cm, forewings between 3 and 1 cm long, a wingspan of 9–10 cm and weighing around 1.02 g, the floury bakery is a medium-sized cicada.
Individuals vary markedly in size by region depending on local rainfall, with larger animals associated with regions of higher rainfall. Individuals have a variety of body markings, but all adults have a pale midline on their body. The adult is brown with a white dusted appearance; white downy filaments cover much of the body, but some silver body fur is easily rubbed off in museum specimens. Individuals with an average annual rainfall of over 1000mm are mostly coastal –– but much larger individuals have much larger forewing lengths about 1 cm longer than those in low-rainfall areas. The female is larger than the male, although species size overall varies geographically, with large animals associated in regions of high rainfall. The uncal lobes of Aleeta’s distinctive male genitalia are downturned at their distal ends, whereas those of Tryella are upturned. Abricta curvicosta was originally described as Cicada tephrogaster in 1835; this has long been considered a junior synonym. In 2003, one of the original specimens was designated the lectotype and the other the paralectotype. Unpublished data confirmed it was quite genetically distant from the other 14 species, and so it was classified in a new monotypic genusAleeta.
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This page is based on the article Aleeta curvicosta published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
