[Animals] What to expect from this year's rare double brood of cicadas

[Wolf.17]

 

Two broods of cicadas are due to emerge from the ground this April at the same time for the first time in 200 years. It's going to be loud, messy and very interesting.

The last time an event like this happened, Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States – and it's going to be deafening.

Trillions of periodical cicadas are due to make an appearance across the Midwest and Southeast of America this spring, after spending more than a decade burrowed underground. This year, two broods of flying cicadas will emerge at the same time, and it will be the first time they have emerged simultaneously since 1803.

Periodical cicadas have an incredibly long life cycle, unlike their non-periodical brethren which mature each summer. After hatching, the immature periodical cicadas, called nymphs, spend either 13 or 17 years underground, feeding on roots, before squirming their way above ground and transforming into adult cicadas.

The 17-year Brood XIII is due to emerge in Northern Illinois, and the 13-year Brood XIX will emerge in parts of the southeastern US. Both events are due to begin in late April. And for those in the right spot, there is a small area where the broods may potentially overlap. According to researchers at the University of Connecticut, the greatest likelihood of contact between the two broods is in small patches of woodland around Springfield, Illinois.

"This is not a common event," says Gene Kritsky, a cicada expert and professor emeritus of biology at Mount St Joseph University in Ohio. His love of these insects began 50 years ago when he first learned about periodical cicadas, and realised there was much to discover by using historical data to create maps of their distribution patterns. He describes himself as a "frustrated historian who is also an entomologist".

And it is not just Kritsky who is fascinated by these musical insects, which belong to the stink bug family, and have species names ranging from "common cactus dodger" and "scissor grinder" to "masked devil" and "whiskey drinker". His passion has inspired other Americans to document cicadas – half a million videos and photographs have been uploaded to Kritsky's citizen science app Cicada Safari, which he launched in 2019.

The assorted species of Magicicada have earned themselves a "worldwide following", observed one paper on the ecology of periodical cicadas, due to their "recklessly theatrical" emergences in tremendous numbers.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240125-cicadas-what-to-expect-from-this-years-rare-dual-brood-emergence