Biodiversity complexity in the Australian "Tick Tock" cicadas

Patrick D. Gero, Kathy B.R. Hill, David C. Marshall, Christopher L. Owen, and Chris  Simon.

 

Biodiversity complexity in the Australian “Tick Tock” cicadas (Cicadidae: Cicadettinae: Cicadettini)

 

Abstract.

 

The world’s biodiversity is threatened and under-explored. The goal of our research is to investigate the biodiversity of the Australian ‘Tick Tock’ cicada species complex, currently described as Physeema quadricincta and Physeema latorea (Walker 1850). The group contains 13 different "song species" endemic to Southwestern Australia (Moulds 1990). While they remain undescribed, the different song types are referred to as 'Physeema quadricincta' (sometimes as Tick Tock or Quad complex) followed by a descriptive nick name --'Big Tick Tock', 'Slow Tick Tock' -- or as in 'Physeema latorea' – 'Long Winged', 'Long Winded', 'Yalgoo', 'Fast Slow', 'Triplet', 'Moir Tock', and 'Perth'. These nicknames are based on the song, location, or appearance of the cicada.  Here, mitochondrial DNA phylogeography, courtship songs and morphology are combined to estimate the biodiversity of the complex and determine species boundaries in the context of four commonly used species concepts --the biological species concept, phylogenetic species concept, cohesion species concept and the “unified species concept”.