Trillions of Bizarre Wonders of Evolution, Red Eyes periodical cicada There's a pump in the head and jet-like muscles in the back. appear in numbers It won't be seen for decades, maybe even centuries.
Cicadas are the kings of nature, crawling out from underground every 13 or 17 years to sing songs as loud as jet engines.
These black bugs with bulging eyes are different from their greenish cousins that appear every year. They remain buried year after year until they rise to the surface and take over the landscape, covering their homes with shed exoskeletons and crunching the ground.
This spring, an unusual double dose of cicadas is about to invade two regions of the United States in a phenomenon that John Cooley, a cicada expert at the University of Connecticut, has called “cicada-geddon.” The last time these two groups came together in 1803, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote about cicadas in his garden books but mistakenly called them grasshoppers, was president.
“Periodic cicadas are not subtle,” Cooley said.
If you're curious about what's to come in the future JapaneseCicadas are stranger and bigger, said Georgia Tech biophysicist Saad Bhamla.
“It’s a unique experience and spectacle to see trillions of amazing creatures come out of the Earth and climb the trees,” Bhamla said. “It’s as if an entire alien species were living beneath our feet and then years later came out to say hello.”
Sometimes mistaken for greedy, uninvolved locusts, periodical cicadas are more of a nuisance than they are causing biblical economic damage. Although it can harm young trees and some fruit crops, it is not widespread and can be prevented.
Two flocks combined result in a “mass invasion”: 1 million animals per acre.
Called Brood XIX, the largest geographic swarm in the United States, which appears every 13 years, has already created numerous boreholes in the Georgia red clay and is about to march southeast. It's a sure sign that the cicada takeover is approaching. They appear when the ground warms to 64 degrees Celsius (17.8 degrees Celsius), which is happening faster than before due to climate change, entomologists said. The worms are brown at first, but darken as they mature.
Shortly after the insects appeared in droves in Georgia and the rest of the Southeast, their cicada cousins, which come out every 17 years. hit the state of illinois. They are Brood XIII.
“There is one very widely distributed group, Brood XIX, but there is another group, Brood
“And if you put those two things together… you’re going to get more than you’ve ever had before,” said Paula Shrewsbury, an entomologist at the University of Maryland.
These hidden cicadas are found only in the eastern United States and a few small areas. There are 15 different broods every few years in 17 and 13 year cycles. Entomologists say the two groups may actually be overlapping in a small area near central Illinois, but probably not interbreeding.
Experts told CBS Chicago Don't Avoid Insects in Illinois When they show up there, it will probably be around mid-May.
“This large-scale invasion is going to be a peaceful invasion,” said Allen Lawrence, associate curator of entomology at the Peggy Notebaert Museum of Nature.
The numbers coming out this year (averaging about 1 million per acre across hundreds of millions of acres across 16 states) are staggering. Cooley said it could easily be in the hundreds of trillions, maybe even trillions.
A larger adjacent co-occurrence will likely occur in 2076 when the two largest clusters, XIX and XIV, come together, Cooley said.
The origins of some of the astronomical numbers of cicadas can be traced to evolution, Cooley and several other entomologists said. Fat, slow and delicious, periodic cicadas make ideal food for the birds, Raupp said. (His school has released a cicada cookbook, “Cicada-Licious.”) But there are too many of them to be eaten to extinction, he said.
“Birds everywhere will be feasting, their bellies will be full and the cicadas will be victorious once again,” Raupp said.
Your pet can even try making a snack out of cicadas. the vet told CBS Chicago. It is generally not harmful to health.
“These are not toxic to pets. They won't sting or bite your pet,” said Dr. Cynthia Gonzalez of Family Pet Animal Hospital in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. She says, “The only problem your pet may have is if they ingest a large amount, or if they are a small dog, if they eat a small piece of the exoskeleton. Sometimes it can really irritate the gastrointestinal tract.”
“Sometimes, in rare cases, if your pet is also allergic to shellfish, the animal may have an allergic reaction to some component of its exoskeleton,” says board-certified small animal internal specialist Kelly Cairns, DVM, MS, DACVIM. The doctor said: He is a medical professional, Vice President of Medical Excellence and Education at Thrive Pet Healthcare, and Secretary to the Board of Directors of the Chicago Veterinary Medical Association.
Prime numbers and evolution tricks
Another way cicadas use numbers or math is in cycles. They stay underground for 13 or 17 years, both of which are in the minority. Those large, odd numbers are likely an evolutionary trick to prevent predators from relying on predictable appearances.
Cicadas can cause problems for young trees and nurseries when mating and nest-building become heavy and branches break, Shrewsbury said.
Periodic cicadas can find plants around mature trees, mate, lay eggs, and then go underground to feed on roots, said Gene Kritsky, a cicada expert and biologist at Mount St. Joseph's University who wrote a book about double emergence this year. ) said. This makes suburban America a “periodical cicada paradise,” he said.
When all the cicadas gather on a tree and start singing in chorus, it can be hard on your eardrums. This is like a single bar where males sing to attract a mate, and each species has its own mating call.
“The whole tree is screaming,” said Kritsky, who created the Cicada Safari app to track the location of cicadas.
Cooley wears hearing protection. This is because hearing loss can become too intense.
“It’s in the 110 decibel range,” Cooley said. “It’s like putting your head next to a jet. It’s painful.”
Courtship is something to behold. Kritsky imitated the man singing “ffaairro (his pitch rises), ffairro”.
“She flaps her wings,” Kritsky said during the play-by-play. “He gets closer. He sings. She flaps her wings. If he gets really close, there will be no gap and he will go ffairro, ffairro, ffairro, fffairo.”
Mating is then completed and the female lays eggs in grooves in the branches. Cicada nymphs fall to the ground and then dig to reach tree roots.
Cicadas are strange in that they feed on the xylem of trees, which carries water and some nutrients. Although the pressure inside the xylem is lower than outside, a pump on the cicada's head allows the cicadas to access fluids, preventing them from escaping the tree, said Carrie Deans, an entomologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.
Because cicadas consume so much water, they also have a lot of liquid waste that needs to be removed. Georgia Tech's Bhamla said they do so thanks to special muscles that produce jets of urine that flow faster than those of most other animals.
In Macon, Georgia, TJ Rauls was planting roses and holly this week when he discovered a cicada while digging. A neighbor has already posted an image of an early appearance of the animal.
Rauls named his bug “Bobby” and said he hopes to see more in the future.
“I think it’s going to be interesting,” Rauls said. “You’d be embarrassed by all their noise.”