Ed Reschke, via Getty
Brace yourselves, Illinoisans. A truly amazing number of cicadas are living, making sweet love, and dying in a tree near you. This summer, for the first time in more than two centuries, two flocks of periodic cicadas, the 13-year Brood XIX and the 17-year Brood XIII, will emerge en masse in central Illinois. For most humans, they are a temporary sight, a deafening nuisance that then fades away. For many other Midwestern animals, plants, and microorganisms, they are a precious delicacy that brings new life to forests far beyond death.
From Nebraska to New York, a swarm of 15 periodic cicadas grows underground, silently sucking watery sap from tree roots. After 13 or 17 years (depending on the brood), thousands of adults, each about an inch long, dig their bodies in synchrony and crawl out of the ground en masse for a month-long summer orgy. After mating, they lay eggs in forest trees and die, and the children born in the trees fall to the forest floor and a new cycle begins. Cicadas cannot fly far from where they are born, so each cicada occupies a different region of the United States. “They form a mosaic in the landscape,” says Chris Simon, a senior research fellow in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut.
Most years, at least one of these 15 cicadas emerges (annual cicadas are not to be confused with the regularly occurring smaller cicadas; they emerge separately each summer ). Sometimes two chicks appear at the same time. It is not uncommon for multiple chicks to coexist in the same location. “What’s unusual is that these two chicks are next to each other,” says John Lil, an insect ecologist at George Washington University. “Illinois will be ground zero. It will be covered in cicadas from the top of the state to the bottom.” The last time these people swarmed the earth was Thomas Jefferson. President, the city of Chicago did not yet exist.
Entomologists around the world are already booking their May flights. “We’re like a group of cicadas,” Lil says. He promises this once-in-a-generation spectacle will be even better than April’s show. total solar eclipse. When Brood X appeared in 2004, Lil remembers walking outside in the middle of the night. “For two seconds, I saw water running down the street, and I thought, ‘Wow, I didn’t know it was raining.’ When I focused my eyes, it literally crawled across the street. I realized there were thousands of cicadas out there.”
Some cicada enthusiasts, like author and entomologist Greg Kritsky, have already seen Brood XIII emerge several times. But for most predators, hatchlings are a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and it’s always a very pleasant surprise. “This is a treasure trove of food,” Kritsky says. “It’s like walking outside and finding the world swarming with Hershey’s Kisses.”
Cicadas are surprisingly cool and rich in protein. Tastes like high quality shrimp–Easy and delicious prey. “Periodic cicadas sit inside ducks,” says Lil. They do not bite, sting, or spit venom, and are completely tolerant of being touched. Dogs, raccoons, birds, and other common predators devour this flying feast until they’ve had enough, but the cicada population does little. This is their secret weapon, Lil says. Without other defense mechanisms, “they simply overwhelm predators with their abundance.”
Just as an unexpected free dinner distracts you from the leftovers in your fridge, the emergence of cicadas this summer will keep predators away from their usual prey.Between 2021 Blued X appearsscientist Zoe Getman Pickering of Rill’s research group, discovered that: A bird swooped down on a cicada., the number of caterpillars has exploded. The caterpillars that escaped the birds munched on twice as many oak leaves as normal, and the chain of effects continued. It is impossible for scientists to study them all. “This unexpected disruption causes the ecosystem to move rapidly, changing many things at once,” said Louis Yang, an ecologist and professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis.
From birth to death, these insects shape the forest around them. As temperatures rise in late April, pale, red-eyed cicada larvae begin to make little-finger-sized holes in the ground, preparing for their grand entrance in May.All these tunnels please make it easy Rainwater moves through the soil, making it available to plants and other soil-dwelling microorganisms. Once fully grown and on the ground, adult cicadas shed their exoskeleton, spread their wings, take flight, and spend their remaining 4 to 6 weeks on earth singing (for males) while listening to the sexiest of songs. (For females) spend time. , and copulation.
The mother cicada uses metal reinforcement They use a saw built into their abdomen (a wood drilling shaft layered with aluminum, copper, iron, and other elements) to cut pockets in tree branches, where they each lay about 500 eggs. In some cases, these cuts can cause twigs to wither or break, causing the leaves to die. This can cause permanent damage to very young seedlings, but mature trees will shed the cut branches and continue to live on. “It’s like natural pruning,” Kritsky says. This keeps healthy trees strong, prevents disease, and promotes flower growth.
When the estrus period ends, the cicada’s life also ends. “At the end of summer, everyone forgets about cicadas,” Lil says. “They all die. They all rot in the ground. And they’re gone.” By late June, millions of pounds of cicadas will pile up and rot at the base of the trees. Kritsky says the smell is “a sensory memory you’ll never forget, like rancid Limburger cheese.”
However, these stinky carcasses deliver large amounts of food to scavengers in the soil. “Cicadas act as a nutrient storehouse,” Yang says. “When they emerge, they release all their stored energy into the ecosystem” and return their bodies to the plants that nurtured them. In the short term, cicada carcasses have a fertilizing effect; serves as food for microorganisms in the soil help plants grow It’s bigger. And when cicada debris washes into forest ponds and streams, cicada nutrients can be carried downstream, where they can be attacked by cicadas. Strengthen aquatic ecosystems Far beyond their native trees.
It may smell like hamburgers, but if you’re lucky enough to find a tree that attracts a lot of cicadas this year, it’s best to leave the cicada carcasses alone until they decompose naturally, Yang says. “They’ll be gone soon,” he says. If the pile is particularly unsightly, simply sweep it out of the way and let nature do the rest.
That thought billions of screeching insects It may make your skin crawl in your backyard, but you don’t have to passively observe them when they arrive. Researchers are asking citizen scientists to send in photos of local cicadas to help map future emergence.of semi-safari The app, developed by Kritsky, received and verified 561,000 cicada photos during the 2021 Brood X outbreak. He hopes to get more photos of cicadas this time.
“This is an amazing natural phenomenon and not something to be afraid of,” Lill says.
This story was originally wired.com.
