Cicada, Tibicen plebejus

With a body length between 30 and 37 mm (1 1/5 - 1 1/2 in), T. plebejus is the largest European cicada.

It is a bulky, brownish insect, with transparent brown-veined wings, characterized by its loud, piercing call, which can be heard from a considerable distance.

It is a very common insect in the Pelion region and Greece, occurring in or around trees and open woodland.

In ancient Greece, cicadas were considered a symbol of immortality. The excerpt below, from a really interesting essay entitled "Cicadas in Ancient Greece", by Rory B. Egan, shows how ancient Greeks perceived the cicada:

"The song of the cicada is not the only thing that commends it to the attention of the ancient Greeks and many other human observers. The emergence of the nymph from the ground in which it has spent several months or years, the shedding of its integument and the deployment of its wings as it begins its adult phase is another process that stimulates the curiosity and often the admiration of the human observer. This whole sequence of events was briefly but accurately described in the fourth century B.C. by the great Greek polymath Aristotle in his work entitled Historia Animalium (i.e. Investigation of Living Things). There is nothing in the description offered by Aristotle that could not have been viewed by any unsophisticated observer in the preceding centuries, and it is observations of this sort that generated such widespread beliefs as the one that the cicada was "born from the earth," or that it was capable of resurrection and therefore an appropriate symbol of immortality. A related belief is that by shedding its skin and sprouting wings on its fresh white body it could realize perpetual youth. Another popular belief, again based on observation, was that the cicada subsisted entirely on a diet of dew or on dew and air. The notion that they fed on air might have derived from examination of the large empty space in their abdomen. As for the dew in their diet; it is probably owing to observations, such as have been made by many moderns, of quantities of fluid in and around the trees which the insects infest. In reality the fluid has probably oozed from the holes bored through the bark by the xylem-feeding insects or some of it might be profuse quantities of liquid excrement that a tree-full of sap-imbibing insects can produce."

Food
Sucks sap from plants.

Active
June - September

Habitat
In and around trees and open woodland. Prefers pines, particularly umbrella pines.

Distribution
Throughout southern Europe. Does not extend far north.

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Taxonomy

Superkingdom: Eukaryota; Kingdom: Metazoa; Phylum: Arthropoda; Subphylum: Chelicerata; Superclass: Hexapoda; Class: Insecta; Subclass: Neoptera; Order: Hemiptera; Suborder: Homoptera; Suborder: Brachycera; Superfamily: Cicadoidea; Family: Cicadidae; Subfamily: Tibiceninae; Genus: Tibicen; Species: plebejus.