The male has distinctive genitalia and a loud and complex call generated by the frequent buckling of ribbed tymbals and amplified by abdominal air sacs.

It is a relatively poor flier, preyed upon by cicada killer wasps and a wide variety of birds, and can succumb to a cicada-specific fungal disease.

Max Moulds conducted a morphological analysis of the genus and found the cicadas split naturally into clades according to biogeographical region.

[10] Phylogenetic evidence supports Aleeta and Tryella being the closest relatives to the famous periodical cicadas (genus Magicicada) of North America despite being widely geographically separated.

[3] Their dry mass is on average 36.2% of their total bodymass, higher than most Australian cicadas, which suggests strong exoskeletal armour.

The floury baker rapidly extends or raises its abdomen, thus modulating the influence of the air sacs on the sound to change its volume, pitch or tune during the introduction to the free song.

[24] Members of Aleeta and Tryella are easily distinguished from other Australian cicadas as they lack tymbal covers, while the costal margin of their forewings gets larger toward the point where the wing is attached to the body.

[5] Eggs are laid in a series of slits usually cut by the mother's ovipositor in live branches or twigs of their food plants.

[25] Oviposition has been observed on a wide range of native and introduced plant species and can weaken the branches of young orchard trees such that they cannot sustain the load of their fruit.

[3] After hatching, the nymphs fall from the branches to seek a crack in the soil where they can burrow, often to a depth of 10–40 cm (4–15.5 in), by digging with their large forelegs.

[22] Larger species of cicada like A. curvicosta are thought to spend 2–8 years underground, during which time they grow and feed through their rostrum on the sap from tree roots.

[26][27] Although consistently taking place at night, the emergence of the population is diffusely spread over the season in comparison to the more high-density Australian species.

[27] A South East Queensland study reported nymphs would emerge on most tree species but avoid Norfolk pine (Araucaria heterophylla) and broad-leaved paperbark (Melaleuca quinquenervia).

[6] The nymph grips onto the tree bark with all of its legs, swallows air and redistributes haemolymph to split the cast down the center of its back.

[22] The floury baker is found from the Daintree River in North Queensland to Bendalong in southern New South Wales.

[28] Individuals are usually solitary,[4] with a South-East Queensland study estimating densities of only 50 per hectare (compared to some other Australian species nearly two orders of magnitude more dense).

[12] Bird predation of the adult cicada is common, with wrens and grey fantails,[29] noisy miners, blue-faced honeyeaters, little wattlebirds, grey and pied butcherbirds, magpie-larks, Torresian crows, white-faced herons and even the nocturnal tawny frogmouth, all reported as significant predators.

[21] The adults of some Australian cicada are subject to a cicada-specific fungus from the genus Massospora, which grows on their genitalia and abdominal cavity, eventually causing the tail end to drop off.

They are then shoved into the hunter's burrow, where the helpless cicada is placed on a shelf in an often extensive 'catacomb', to form food-stock for the wasp grub growing from the eggs deposited within.

[13] Schoolchildren have been known to bring live adults into classrooms to startle the class with their "strident shrieking",[31][32] typically to the observable displeasure of teachers.