Did you know that you can tell different species of cicada apart just by listening to their songs? The office I'm in is also the office that visiting scholars use, so I got to have coffee with an expert on cicadas yesterday morning. Apparently differences in their songs are reflected in their genes...I poached this picture from wikipedia, and it's of the American cicada, but there are numerous species of cicada here. The cicadas in New Zealand, Australia, and New Caledonia radiated out of Oceania and spread north through Asia. It seems a little strange, in some respects, after years of learning about our African origins and thinking of Africa as the "cradle of life", to think of species originating on this side of the world and spreading out. Then to think of species originating and differentiating all over the world for the thousands of years since then and before, and then migrating and fanning out.
Running through the woods near my house the sound of the cicada songs can be deafening, more like a roar than a chirp. Sometimes it even drowns out the sound of the birds, and with the tree ferns everything suddenly feels very prehistoric.
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