Sciobia (Thliptoblemmus) natalia Gorochov, 1985

To the human ear, the song uttered by S. (T.) natalia can be distinguished from that of S. (T.) caliendrum. It is shorter, raspy, less intense and less musical than in S. (T.) caliendrum. In Fig. 5, we depict waveforms and spectrograms. Sciobia (T.) caliendrum shows a more continuous singing activity than S. (T.) natalia. Chirps are quite different between species. Chirps are 100ms in length with an uniform, low amplitude decay of 100-200 ms long (Fig. 5C) and are composed of 6-9 syllables of regular amplitude with the first to third increasing progressively and maintaining this maxi- mum to the end (Fig. 3E). The syllable presents ampli- tude modulation (Fig. 5G) at 6 and 5 KHz respectively (Fig. 5I) related with a trill-type sound effect. On the contrary, S. (T.) natalia chirp is longer (250-350 ms) (Fig. 5D) with an average of 25 syllables per chirp (range 23-28) and a progressive amplitude with sharp end (Fig. 5F). The syllable presents an only compo- nent at 7 Khz (Fig. 5H).

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According to our field observations, we believe that an important reason for S. (T.) natalia going unnoticed is the coexistence in mosaic areas of appropriate microhabitats with S. (T.) caliendrum, a more conspicuous relative species. In the appropriate dates, S. (T.) caliendrum is extraordinary noisy and visible in areas where S. (T.) natalia can also be pres- ent. Sciobia (T.) caliendrum may be present at high densities in certain plots where choruses are heard everywhere with a louder and ubiquitous song, mask- ing the presence of S. (T.) natalia, even if recognized by ear. Under the same situation, most of the visual contacts are for S. (T.) caliendrum that is easier to find in plots with bare ground or with short or sparse vegetation. A shallow evaluation probably result in S. natalia going unnoticed, which may be the case in some of the many areas in which we found S. (T.) caliendrum. (3) The lack of researchers devoted to studies of classical taxonomy, species discovery, descriptive work on faunistics of arthropods and prone to combine museum with field research. This is a serious problem for biodiversity assessment and respond to the low promotion value and poor fund- ing of these kind of studies, particularly neglected for many decades (e.g. Wheeler et al., 2004).

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The crowd courtship of Sciobia (T) crickets, sing- ing and moving in large numbers in certain plots of the Cádiz province, is an entomological phenomenon worth preserving for Europe. [1]

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