Cicadas

Considering its size, New Zealand has a rich cicada fauna, which reflects its diversity of habitats and climatic conditions.

There are over forty known species and subspecies of cicadas in this country, and about ten more waiting to be formally described and named. All of them are endemic to New Zealand and its outlying islands, occupying a wide range of habitats from coastal dunes to mountain tops, from thick forests to open country and riverbeds. 

The first New Zealand cicadas were collected by Joseph Banks in 1769 during James Cook’s first voyage to New Zealand, and two of  these cicadas are still kept in the Natural History Museum in London (Dugdale and Fleming, 1969).

Te Papa’s Cicada Collection, with 6700 dry-mounted pinned specimens, is the world’s largest collection of New Zealand cicadas. They are kept in 53 glass-topped wooden drawers, one of which is shown here. The collection includes all known New Zealand species, except two, and holds twenty-two primary type specimens - the original specimens on which published descriptions are based.

The oldest cicadas held in the Museum date back to the 1880s. They were acquired in 1946 as part of the Hudson Collection. Two other important collections of cicadas were later donated to the Museum. These were the Grant-Taylor Collection, acquired in 1982, and the Fleming Collection - comprising about 3350 specimens plus many audiotapes and sonograms - presented by Sir Charles and Lady Fleming between 1972 and 1987.

Sir Charles A Fleming (1916-1987) was an expert on the ecology, evolution, and systematics of New Zealand cicadas (Buckley et al, 2002). He pioneered the study of their songs by recording them in the field with especially adapted equipment. Fleming’s extensive collection of New Zealand cicadas and tape recordings were the basis for a large number of scientific papers he published between 1965 and 1984. 

For the last ten years, molecular biologists from the United States and New Zealand have been working together to explain the origin of New Zealand cicadas. According to them, New Zealand is an ideal laboratory to study cicada evolution. They stress the importance of preserving museum collections such as Te Papa’s since these collections contain the basic data from which further knowledge can be developed.

References
Buckley, T R, Arensburger, P, Simon, C, and Chambers, G K.  2002.  'Combined data, bayesian phylogenetics, and the origin of the New Zealand cicada genera.'  Systematic biology 51(1). pp4-18.

Dugdale, J S, and Fleming, C A. 1969. 'Two new cicadas collected on Cook’s Endeavour voyage, with description of a new genus.'  New Zealand Journal of Science 12(4). pp929-957.