A few people have asked me if cicadas sing at night. The truth is, in most cases they do not. Most of the time when you hear an insect at night it is a cricket or katydid. However, there are a few cases when cicadas will sing at night:
- In the presence of artificial light sources: full moon, streetlights, flood lights. I turned on a flood light tonight to test this and it worked: a cicada started to sing.
- When it’s extraordinarily hot.
- If the cicada is disturbed or attacked.
- If they’re overcrowded
Thanks to John Cooley for most of this information.
Visit the Sample Songs of Crickets and Katydids web site for sound clips of katydids and crickets.
Prof. Douglas Galvao of the State University of Campinas has written a paper titled Emergence of Prime Numbers as the Result of Evolutionary Strategy. He is hoping to get feedback from the scientific / cicada community.
We investigate by means of a simple theoretical model the emergence of prime numbers as life cycles, as those seen for some species of cicadas.
You can download a PDF version of the paper. Windows users will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it, and Mac users can simply use Preview.
You can contract Prof. Douglas Galvao, as well:
Prof. D.S. Galvao
Head of Applied Physics Department
State University of Campinas
Campinas – Sao Paulo – BRAZIL
Another summer cicada article from Jennifer Pinner of the East Valley Tribune.
By now, you’ve probably heard them buzzing. The only bug on this planet that sweats lives in your back yard. They’re leaving brown, crunchy skins on your trees and singing into the evening. And odds are, cicadas and their mating calls are getting on your nerves.
Here’s a nice photo of a Tibicen cicada infected with a fungi. Yuck! Thanks to Matt for the photo.
These sort of things disgust me, but I’m posting it anyway.
Four cups of chopped rhubarb, 1 cup of fresh cicadas, washed and any hard parts removed; 1�1/3 cups white sugar, 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour, 1tablespoon butter, and a 9-inch double crust pie crust.
You’ll find the rest of the recipe in this article from the Arizona Republic: Answering bug query is easy as pie.
From a recent article in the Macon Telegraph:
As a kid, I remember hunting around the back yard looking for cicada skeletons. They always gave me the creeps, seeing little ghost bugs perched on a pile of firewood or inside the depths of the garden shed. They were crunchy when you crushed them, and they were a sure sign that summer was here.
The article mentions this web site as well.
There’s an article in the Pougkeepsie Journal by Dan Shapley titled Dog-day cicadas provide summer tunes.
This article is reminiscent of the recent Gregory Rummo article Bugged by all that noise.
More Tibicen photos from Roy Troutman.
Matt sent us some straggler pictures taken earlier this year:
