A ‘foreign’ cicada that is commonly found in several parts of South India has assumed an Indian identity.
The insect species that has now been christened Purana cheeveeda (after its Malayalam name Cheeveedu) used to be mistaken for Purana tigrina, a species that was first described in Malaysia in 1850. In view of the differences in their morphological characteristics, the Association for Advancement in Entomology has corrected the longstanding error in taxonomic identification and has excluded the Malaysian species from the South Indian cicada fauna.
The ‘discovery’ that involved correcting the mistaken identity was undertaken by a research team led by Travancore Nature History Society research associate Kalesh Sadasivan and comprising independent researchers Jebine Jose, Bernad M. Thampan, P.V. Muralimohan, Baiju Kochunarayanan, Anzil Shereef and Mick Webb of the National History Museum in the U.K.
