The spring cicada: Carineta diardi (Guérin-Méneville, 1829) (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) in the historical collections of MZUSP as a source of environmental data and occurrence patterns in the Atlantic Forest

• Grant number: 24/23499-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: March 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Zoology - Taxonomy of Recent Groups
• Principal Investigator: Talita Roell
• Grantee: Lorena Rodrigues Bissoli
• Host Institution: Museu de Zoologia (MZ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Biological collections are crucial for the development of knowledge in several areas, as they contain evidence of diversity in space and time. The Hemiptera Collection at the USP Zoology Museum is one of the largest collections in Latin America for this group and includes insects popularly known as stink bugs, aphids, scale insects, leafhoppers and cicadas. The cicada collection, which is especially mentioned as the focus of this project, houses organisms from various locations around the world, collected at different times. There are even time series of some species, such as Carineta diardi, collected for about 70 years. Cicadas are of extreme ecological and economic importance, in addition to being very characteristic, and, despite being very present in collections at several research centers, there are many gaps in the information about this group. The Carineta diardi cicadas are known as colorful cicadas, and adults are usually sighted between early September and the first weeks of December in the Atlantic Forest, where the species occurs. Recently, based on data from citizen science platforms, a study showed that they occur in sympatry with cicadas of another species and that, due to the different frequencies of their songs, they are able to coexist harmoniously. The present study aims to compile data on Carineta diardi from the MZUSP collection, as these can be complementary to data from citizen science platforms to explain aspects of the distribution and ecology of the species. Based on the organization of the data, future assessments of the spatial-temporal occurrence patterns of the species can be carried out.