Aleeta curvicosta
Aleeta curvicosta (commonly known as the floury baker or floury miller, known until 2003 as Abricta curvicosta) is a species of cicada, one of Australia's most familiar insects. Native to the continent's eastern coastline, it was described in 1834 by Ernst Friedrich Germar. The floury baker is the only described species in the genus Aleeta.
The floury baker's distinctive appearance and loud call make it popular with children. Both 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. Its forewings have distinctive dark brown patches at the base of two of their apical cells. The female is larger than the male, although species size overall varies geographically, with larger animals associated with regions of higher rainfall. 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.
The floury baker is solitary and occurs in low densities. Individuals typically emerge from the soil through a three-month period from late November to late February, and can be encountered until May. The floury baker is found on a wide variety of trees, with some preference for species of paperbark (Melaleuca). It is a relatively poor flier, preyed upon by cicada killer wasps and a wide variety of birds, and can succumb to a cicada-specific fungal disease.
German naturalist Ernst Friedrich Germar described the floury baker in 1834 as Cicada curvicosta.[1] Germar based the description on two specimens now in the Hope Entomological Collections, Oxford, but did not designate a type specimen and their exact locations were not recorded. In 2003, one of the original specimens was designated the lectotype and the other the paralectotype.[3]
Prominent Swedish entomologist Carl Stål named the genus Abricta in 1866, and it was either treated as a subgenus of the genus Tibicen or a genus in its own right. Thus it became known as Tibicen curvicostus, and Abricta curvicosta from 1906. French entomologist Jean Baptiste Boisduval described two specimens collected from Port Jackson as Cicada tephrogaster (later Tibicen tephrogaster) in 1835; this has long been considered a junior synonym.[3][4] However, a review of the genus in 2003 showed Abricta to be a disparate group of species, and the Australian members were moved to other genera. Max Moulds conducted a morphological analysis of the genus and found the cicadas split naturally into clades according to biogeographical region. Of the 15 Australian species, the floury baker was the earliest offshoot. Unpublished data confirmed it was quite genetically distant from the other 14 species, and so it was classified in a new monotypic genus Aleeta, while most of the others were placed in the genus Tryella.[3] The morphological distinction between Aleeta and Tryella is based on two factors: A. curvicosta has a larger forewing size – rarely less than 3.2 cm (1.3 in) and usually over 4 cm (1.6 in), whereas Tryella is never above 3.2 cm (1.3 in); the uncal lobes of Aleeta's distinctive male genitalia are downturned at their distal ends, whereas those of Tryella are upturned.[5] The name Aleeta is derived from the Greek aleton meaning flour or meal.[3]
The floury baker gains its common name from the appearance of having been dusted with flour,[4][6] and both the vernacular terms baker and miller were in use by 1860.[7] The name is sometimes corrupted as "flowery baker".[8] As of 1905 the same name "floury baker" was also in use for another species of Australian cicada (Altria perulata, now Arunta perulata), which has white "sacks" as sounding boxes.[9] That species is now commonly referred to as the "white drummer".[10]
