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It is
very easy to tell a cicada from a beetle (a member of the
Coleoptera), especially one about to emerge
from the nymph casing. As beetles, being
endopterygotes (like flies, bees, ants, butterflies, etc) have a larvae like a
grub (maggot, caterpillar, etc, very different from an adult) and so the pupa is
rather shapeless, basically a bag, whilst the animal changes between two very
different life forms. Cicadas being in the other half of insects (exoptygotes),
the larval form changes gradually through a series of moults, all pretty much in
shape like miniature adults. Often in that half of the insects, the adults
differ in appearance from larvae just in being bigger and having wings and
sexual organs. The shape of a cicada nymph casing is as we all know, shows a perfectly formed mobile
animal that is quite like the adult.
There
isn't a lot to go on the half munched item in your photo and I can't pick it,
but what there is does look more beetle like to me. And monotremata is right.
Philip
Harvey tells me that the alleged cicada in my last bulletin
is, rather, a member of the Coleoptera. He may be right, and if so
I am delighted to be corrected. My next instalment takes me into Newstead
to meet up with my fellow Melbourne Uni law student from the 1950s and old New
Guinea hand, John Pasquarelli. Since his stormy political days in Canberra
he has turned his hand to painting and held some successful exhibitions.
The point here is that, like myself and many Canberra residents, he has a
particular feeling for magpies which have emerged as a theme in several
paintings. In this, he is in the company of among others The Port Jackson
Painter, Sydney Long, Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan and Clifton Pugh who have all
taken the maggie as a subject, each in their own way. Moreover, as shown
here in the early morning Newstead light, John is a Feeder, as several of us
are, taking pleasure in the grateful melodious chortle of our black and white
friends. I trust I am on firm ground taxonomically in suggesting that the magpie
in the painting is watching a member of the Monotremata.
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