[ad_1]
Cicadas’ jet-stream urine sprays intruders.
[ad_2]
Tag: Cicadas
-
Cicadas are back, but climate change is messing with their body clocks
[ad_1]
Billions of cicadas are emerging across about 16 states in the Southeast and Midwest. Periodical cicadas used to reliably emerge every 13 or 17 years, depending on their brood. But in a warming world where spring conditions arrive sooner, climate change is messing with the bugs’ internal alarm clocks.
Scientists believe that cicadas count years through the change in fluid flow in tree roots, and when their year to emerge arrives, they stay underground until the soil temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit. Spring-like conditions now occur earlier, with the season warming 2 degrees Fahrenheit across the U.S. since 1970, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit researching climate change.
Spring arriving sooner means so are the cicadas. Last month, the cicadas’ return started in Georgia nearly two weeks ahead of schedule before spreading north as far as the suburbs of Chicago. The Southwest has experienced the most spring warming, with locations in Nevada, Texas, and Arizona exceeding 6 degrees Fahrenheit of spring warming since 1970, according to Climate Central.
“In 2021, they emerged 11 days — almost two weeks — earlier,” said biologist Gene Kritsky, who has been studying cicadas for decades. “This is true for Baltimore, for Washington, for Philadelphia, for Indianapolis.”
Cicada watchers used to be able to predict their emergence as easily as astronomers could predict the recent solar eclipse. But that has become more challenging as the cicadas’ patterns are changing as warm spring days happen more often.
ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images
In 2007, a midwinter warm spell in Ohio caused trees to prematurely start growing leaves, making the cicadas think an entire year had passed. Kritsky said this tricked them into counting the years wrong and, when true spring arrived months later, they emerged a year ahead of schedule.
“They had two fluid flows, so for them, it was 17 years,” said Kritsky. “They didn’t detect that there were only a few weeks between. They just detected that the fluid stopped and then started up again,” said Kritsky.
Once they do make it back out to the world, they live for just a few weeks with one goal in mind: to make sure the species survives.
“They come up in massive numbers to overwhelm their predators. So the predators can eat every cicada they want, and there’s still millions left to reproduce,” said Kritsky.
[ad_2]
-
Up close and personal, cicadas display Nature’s artwork. Discerning beholders find beauty in bugs.
[ad_1]
With rich reds, gentle greens and basic blacks, Nature’s screaming, crawling artwork is the epitome of rare beauty — at least in the eyes of some beholders. To others, it may seem just creepy.
It’s a colorful, ever-changing canvas of bugs. Lots of them.
A once-in-221-year convergence of two broods of periodical cicadas are emerging at the same time. The big effect of the cicadas is the sheer numbers. Trillions are expected to populate 16 states by mid to late June. They can be overwhelming, messy and loud.
But individually, up close and personal, a cicada has splashes of color, subtle shapes and that special something that some scientists and artists say translate to beauty. Even if to the average person it’s just a bug.
To artists and scientists, cicadas are more awe-inspiring than awful.
Periodical cicadas are “more otherworldly-looking” than other insects and then the fact they come out every 13 or 17 years adds to their allure, making “them feel like something out of a science fiction movie,” said Jonathan Monaghan, a Washington, D.C.-based visual artist.
“Up close, there is a subtle beauty, particularly with their vibrant cadmium red eyes,” Monaghan said in an email. “Visually, they are at their best freshly molted because there is more contrast on their bodies, showing off some really interesting patterns. Overall though, I still think they are rather goofy looking.”
When collage artist Luis Martin, a self-described art engineer in Brooklyn, first saw cicadas, he was entranced.
“They were just so beautiful and diaphanous that I kind of fell in love,” said Martin, who sported a cicada bolo tie during a Zoom interview. “It looked like a fairy.”
But it’s a love/fear kind of thing. They also seem scary, he said.
“It kind of goes back to these beautiful colors that we tend to think is kind of ugly, right? Because they’re brown, they’re kind of metallic, kind of like alien,” Martin said. “As a brown person myself I find them absolutely beautiful. I can totally see myself in them.”
Not just himself, but Frida Kahlo, Martin said. He could see the artist’s signature eyebrows in the close-up cicada face images.
Scientists are even more mesmerized.
“There’s a lot of things in the world today to get freaked out about. Cicadas aren’t one of them,” said Mount St. Joseph University biologist Gene Kritsky, who wrote a book on this year’s dual emergence. “They’re beautiful insects. They’ve got these red eyes, black bodies, orange-colored veins on these membranous wings. I love the way they come up in these big numbers. I like that I can predict when they come out. It’s a scientific experiment every time.
“But what I really like about them, they got me tenure.”
___
Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
___
Follow Seth Borenstein and Carolyn Kaster on X at @borenbears and @ckaster
______
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
[ad_2]
-
How the cicada invasion is bringing people together
[ad_1]
Kristi Shirley has been captivated by the army of cicadas marching up trees at a park near her home in southern Illinois.
“There’s nothing like it. It’s just like, wow, is this what we’re watching in front of our eyes?” Shirley said.
By now, you’ve probably seen the headlines: two groups of periodical cicadas are emerging at the same time for the first time in two centuries, with billions of the noisy bugs showing up in 16 U.S. states.
But biologist Gene Kritsky says there may be a deeper meaning to this insect invasion. The cicadas are coming together at a time when it’s all too easy to see what keeps people apart, as if nature is (once again) trying to capture our collective attention.
In April, large crowds gathered to watch the total eclipse of the sun. Earlier this month, millions of people marveled as the northern lights danced across the night sky. The two events were accurately predicted by astronomers.
“Now we’re seeing periodical cicadas coming out of the ground, predicted by entomologists. And at a time when people have lost faith in science, this shows that science works and we get it right,” Kritsky said.
These natural events offer a kind of shared experience for people to set aside their differences and come together to marvel at Mother Nature.
“I was at an eclipse party, and there were people there from all political persuasions and we didn’t talk politics. We watched the solar eclipse,” Kritsky said.
Now Kritsky has created an app called Cicada Safari to track where and when the bugs arrive. It’s bringing together people who find something special in the unique-looking insects — people like Shirley, who calls herself a “super user” of the app, and Blaine Rothauser, who struck up a conversation with Shirley about the cicadas just minutes after meeting her at the park near her home.
The power of the cicadas seemed to give these total strangers something to bond over. Instead of questions like ‘What you do?’, ‘What you believe in?’ or ‘Who you support?’, Krisky says that “what’s important is, are we all curious?”
And while it may often feel like people live in separate worlds, we actually share one.
[ad_2]
-
Would you eat a cicada salad? The monstrous little noisemakers descend on a New Orleans menu
[ad_1]
Would you eat a cicada salad? The monstrous little noisemakers descend on a New Orleans menu
As the nation prepares for trillions of red-eyed bugs known as periodical cicadas to emerge, it’s worth noting that they’re not just annoying, noisy pests — if prepared properly, they can also be tasty to eat. Blocks away from such French Quarter fine-dining stalwarts as Antoine’s and Brennan’s, the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans has long served up an array of alternative, insect-based treats at its “Bug Appetit” cafe overlooking the Mississippi River. “Cinnamon Bug Crunch,” chili-fried waxworms, and crispy, cajun-spiced crickets are among the menu items.Video above: Get a look at some of the menu items and hear from the “bug chef.”Periodical cicadas stay buried for years, until they surface and take over a landscape. Depending on the variety, the emergence happens every 13 or 17 years. This year two groups are expected to emerge soon, averaging around 1 million per acre over hundreds of millions of acres across parts of 16 states in the Midwest and South.They emerge when the ground warms to 64 degrees, which is happening earlier than it used to because of climate change, entomologists said. The bugs are brown at first but darken as they mature.Recently, Zack Lemann, the Insectarium’s curator of animal collections, has been working up cicada dishes that may become part of the menu. He donned a chef’s smock this week to show a couple of them off, including a green salad with apple, almonds, blueberry vinaigrette — and roasted cicadas. Fried cicada nymphs were dressed on top with a warm mixture of creole mustard and soy sauce.”I do dragonflies in a similar manner,” Lemann said as he used tweezers to plop nymphs into a container of flour before cooking them in hot oil. Depending on the type and the way they are prepared, cooked cicadas taste similar to toasted seeds or nuts. The Insectarium isn’t the first to promote the idea of eating them. Over the years, they have appeared on a smattering of menus and in cookbooks, including titles like “Cicada-Licious” from the University of Maryland in 2004.”Every culture has things that they love to eat and, maybe, things that are taboo or things that people just sort of, wrinkle their nose and frown their brow at,” Lemann said. “And there’s no reason to do that with insects when you look at the nutritional value, their quality on the plate, how they taste, the environmental benefits of harvesting insects instead of dealing with livestock.”Lemann has been working to make sure the Bug Appetit cafe has legal clearance to serve wild-caught cicadas while he works on lining up sources for the bugs. He expects this spring’s unusual emergence of two huge broods of cicadas to heighten interest in insects in general, and in the Insectarium — even though the affected area doesn’t include southeast Louisiana.”I can’t imagine, given the fact that periodical cicadas are national news, that we won’t have guests both local and from outside New Orleans, asking us about that,” said Lemann. “Which is another reason I hope to have enough to serve it at least a few times to people.”
NEW ORLEANS —As the nation prepares for trillions of red-eyed bugs known as periodical cicadas to emerge, it’s worth noting that they’re not just annoying, noisy pests — if prepared properly, they can also be tasty to eat.
Blocks away from such French Quarter fine-dining stalwarts as Antoine’s and Brennan’s, the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans has long served up an array of alternative, insect-based treats at its “Bug Appetit” cafe overlooking the Mississippi River. “Cinnamon Bug Crunch,” chili-fried waxworms, and crispy, cajun-spiced crickets are among the menu items.
Video above: Get a look at some of the menu items and hear from the “bug chef.”
Periodical cicadas stay buried for years, until they surface and take over a landscape. Depending on the variety, the emergence happens every 13 or 17 years. This year two groups are expected to emerge soon, averaging around 1 million per acre over hundreds of millions of acres across parts of 16 states in the Midwest and South.
They emerge when the ground warms to 64 degrees, which is happening earlier than it used to because of climate change, entomologists said. The bugs are brown at first but darken as they mature.
Recently, Zack Lemann, the Insectarium’s curator of animal collections, has been working up cicada dishes that may become part of the menu. He donned a chef’s smock this week to show a couple of them off, including a green salad with apple, almonds, blueberry vinaigrette — and roasted cicadas. Fried cicada nymphs were dressed on top with a warm mixture of creole mustard and soy sauce.
“I do dragonflies in a similar manner,” Lemann said as he used tweezers to plop nymphs into a container of flour before cooking them in hot oil.
Depending on the type and the way they are prepared, cooked cicadas taste similar to toasted seeds or nuts. The Insectarium isn’t the first to promote the idea of eating them. Over the years, they have appeared on a smattering of menus and in cookbooks, including titles like “Cicada-Licious” from the University of Maryland in 2004.
“Every culture has things that they love to eat and, maybe, things that are taboo or things that people just sort of, wrinkle their nose and frown their brow at,” Lemann said. “And there’s no reason to do that with insects when you look at the nutritional value, their quality on the plate, how they taste, the environmental benefits of harvesting insects instead of dealing with livestock.”
Lemann has been working to make sure the Bug Appetit cafe has legal clearance to serve wild-caught cicadas while he works on lining up sources for the bugs. He expects this spring’s unusual emergence of two huge broods of cicadas to heighten interest in insects in general, and in the Insectarium — even though the affected area doesn’t include southeast Louisiana.
“I can’t imagine, given the fact that periodical cicadas are national news, that we won’t have guests both local and from outside New Orleans, asking us about that,” said Lemann. “Which is another reason I hope to have enough to serve it at least a few times to people.”
[ad_2]
-
Cicadas are making so much noise that residents are calling the police in South Carolina
[ad_1]
Emerging cicadas are so loud in one South Carolina county that residents are calling the sheriff’s office asking why they can hear a “noise in the air that sounds like a siren, or a whine, or a roar.”
The Newberry County Sheriff’s Office posted a message on Facebook on Tuesday letting people know that the whining sound is just the male cicadas singing to attract mates after more than a decade of being dormant.
Some people have even flagged down deputies to ask what the noise is all about, Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster said.
The nosiest cicadas were moving around the county of about 38,000 people, about 40 miles northwest of Columbia, prompting calls from different locations as Tuesday wore on, Foster said.
Their collective songs can be as loud as jet engines and scientists who study them often wear earmuffs to protect their hearing.
After Tuesday, Foster understands why.
“Although to some, the noise is annoying, they pose no danger to humans or pets,” Foster wrote in his statement to county residents. “Unfortunately, it is the sounds of nature.”
Cicadas are already emerging in southern states, like South Carolina, where it warms up faster, while in cooler states, such as those in the upper Midwest, they might not emerge until June.
This year, two broods of cicadas are emerging: Brood XIX, which comes out every 13 years, will emerge in Georgia and the Southeast, and Brood XIII, which emerges every 17 years, will appear in Illinois.
This will be the first time since 1803 that two broods emerged simultaneously. The next time this happens will be 2037. With this convergence, the bugs will arrive in numbers that have not been seen in generations.
The dual cicada brood emergence will primarily be seen in parts of Illinois and Iowa, as well as parts of Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.
U.S. Forest Park Service
Cailtin O’Kane contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
-
This Year’s Cicada Emergence Could Be Largest In Centuries
[ad_1]
Both 13- and 17-year cicadas are due to emerge simultaneously this year for the first time since 1803, with an estimated 1 million cicadas per acre across 16 states coming out of diapause this spring. What do you think?
[ad_2]
