Meeting Abstract
Temperature significantly influences the physiology of organisms. Animals adapt their physiological systems to function efficiently at the specific temperatures that the animal will function. The thermal responses of cicadas show similar adaptation with animals from cooler environments selecting lower body temperatures for activity and possessing lower upper body temperature limits to activity. Early cicada studies demonstrated a relationship between habitat, and ambient temperature of the habitat, and the minimum body temperature necessary to produce a controlled flight. Further study showed many species did not follow this relationship. As a result, we investigated the influence of flight system morphology on the minimum flight temperature (MFT). We measured live mass, wing length, wingspan, wing area and wing loading in an attempt to correlate these morphological parameters to the MFT. We analyzed both intraspecific (in Magicicada spp.) and interspecific relationships of the wing morphology and the ability of the cicadas to fly in a large number of North American cicada taxa (n=109-120). A total of 111 species and 9 subspecies from 15 genera including all major North American habitats were studied. Analyses show that wing morphology (wing length, wing span, wing area and wing loading) scales to body size as predicted by geometric similarity (all P<0.0001). Mass, wing length, wingspan, wing area and wing loading all demonstrate a significant correlation (P<0.05 in all cases) to MFT as would be predicted by aerodynamic theory.
