Key to New Zealand black cicadas (<em>Maoricicada</em> species)
Members of this genus are sometimes referred to as the mountain black cicadas or simply black cicadas.
The genus Maoricicada was reviewed taxonomically by Dugdale & Fleming (1978) and in an earlier paper dealing with lowland species by Fleming (1971), bringing the known fauna to 14 species. Buckley et al. (2002) established the monophyly of the genus and also suggested, through mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis, that cryptic species may be present in Maoricicada.
Arensburger et al. (2004b) estimated a total of 19 species once the genus is fully revised. Buckley & Simon (2007) studied the evolutionary radiation of Maoricicada species in relation to the origin of the New Zealand alpine environment.
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This identification key to the New Zealand cicada genera was created using Lucid Phoenix. |
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The Phoenix application is a JAVA-based applet that loads a pathway key that works very much like a traditional dichotomous key.To run the identification key, users need to have the JAVA Virtual Machine (JVM) v1.4.2 or greater installed on their computer |