Meet the First Cayman Brac Cicada Posted to iNaturalist! - Observation of the Week, 5/16/23

Our Observation of the Week is the first live Cayman Brac Cicada (Diceroprocta ovata) posted to iNaturalist! Seen in the Cayman Islands by @caymanmatt.

A few weeks ago I received a message from @humanbyweight (Chris Alice “Alie” Kratzer), who’s working on a cicada field guide, and she told me about Matt’s cool cicada find from the Cayman Islands. According to her, this is the first known documentation of the insect in the wild since 1938, which is really cool!

Matt Southgate came across it while participating in a bioblitz organized by CBRAC. 

We had just finished working through a transect of plants, at which point the cicada showed up and I took the photo. At the time I hadn't realised how underphotographed the cicadas were, and didn't think anything of it until the ID came up on iNaturalist. I've since looked it up in the Cayman Islands Natural History and Biogeography (Brunt and Davies, 1994) which states there is an endemic scrub cicada to each of the three Cayman Islands. I've now taken part in a couple of Bioblitz events for CBRAC and there is always something unusual to be found.

“Diceroprocta ovata is still very mysterious,” says Alie. “Its song is still unknown to science!” Like Matt says, it’s related to two other species on different Cayman Islands, but Alie tells me “D. ovata always has a little more pruinosity (a white powdery wax) on its abdomen, and the male genitalia is subtly different.” Like other cicadas, these spend their nymphal time underground before climbing up plants and other structures and molt into their adult stage. 

As a child growing up in the Cayman Islands, Matt says he was first interested in the underwater world but got heavily into birding after that. He now works for the Cayman Islands Department of Environment in the Environmental Management Unit and also volunteers as a reviewer for eBird. 

Aside from the birding, my current goal and interest is to capture some of our endemic species that have been little photographed and little studied. I also recently captured a photo of Heteronobo caymanensis (our endemic scorpion), that although not super rare, was a first submission for iNaturalist. Most field guides or identification guides relevant to Cayman are geared to the underwater world (although we do have a great bird guide written by my friend Patricia Bradley and a very extensive Flora book written by George Proctor), so it's a fun challenge to try and identify many of our terrestrial creatures. It often involves searching through old studies dating back to the 1930s, for example.

An iNat user since 2020, Matt (above, processing a loggerhead turtle nest) tells me

I love to use iNaturalist to both record and identify the things I see around me. I believe being able to recognize and understand what you are seeing improves your enjoyment of the outdoors. iNaturalist and the community have definitely helped to improve my enjoyment of nature. I both submit observations and help others with identifications where I can. iNaturalist has also let me connect with others and share knowledge about the Cayman Islands that they aren't able to get from brochures or tourist maps. I love being able to give people pointers on where to go and what they can expect to see.

(Photo of Matt by Dr. Jane Hardwick.)

- Three other observations of Diceroprocta ovata were made on April 29th, bringing the current total posted to iNat up to four.

- Matt, along with, Kelsey Rae Smith and Nicole Martin, co-founded Cayman Birding.

- We profiled Alie last year, after her guide The Social Wasps of North America was published!

- Two notable cicada-related collaborations (both involving @willc-t) have been documented on the iNat blog in the past few years: one about cicada fungus, and the other a cicada rediscovery!

- And there’s more, as Alie explains. “Diceroprocta ovata is not the only cicada species that resurfaced on iNaturalist recently after decades of obscurity. Neocicada pennata, Proarna squamigera, and Diceroprocta mesochlora are a few other great examples. It is not an exaggeration to say that iNaturalist is pushing the boundaries of cicada research forward in ways that were utterly impossible just a decade ago.“

Posted on May 16, 2023 08:57 PM by tiwane