Small Bark Squeaker - Pauropsalta fuscata

Family Cicadidae

This page contains pictures and information about Small Bark Squeaker Cicadas that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.


Body length 18mm

This is the smallest cicada we found in Brisbane. It is brown to dark brown in colour, small in size and wings are clear. It looks almost the same as the Bark Squeaker except a bit smaller in size. On photo it is quite impossible to tell which is which. We believed we might have mixed up some of them in this two web page. Anyway, they do produce very different calls.



We found this small cicada resting on young gum tree stem in Karawatha Forest on a cloudy summer day. It did not fly away even we tried to catch it.



Female laying eggs on stem. Notice the her ovipositor and the cut marks behind her.



We took the above photos on mid summer in a Eucalyptus forest near Mt-Cotton. The cicada was at rest on a young Acacia tree. The cicada was quite camera friendly, it let me take a few photos very closely before it flew away.



Pictures was taken in Karawatha Forest during mid summer.

Reference:
1. Species Pauropsalta fuscata Ewart, 1989 - Australian Faunal Directory, Australian Biological Resources Study.
2. Genus Pauropsalta Goding and Froggatt, 1904 (Squeakers, Bark-buzzer and Tree-buzzer) - L. W. Popple, Zoology and Entomology, the University of Queensland, Australia, 2006.