Time for the yearly Tibicen post
The Tibicen is the genus of annual cicada most people are familiar with.
Here are some general details about Tibicen:
- They emerge every summer. They do not emerge in broods.
- They emerge in small numbers (small relative to periodical cicadas).
- They are timid and elusive compared to periodical cicadas.
- Most are physically larger than periodical cicadas.
- They are well camouflaged: their colors and patterns of colors help to hide them in their surroundings. They look like little military vehicles, IMHO.
- Colloquial names for Tibicens: August Dry Birds, Dog Day cicadas, Harvest Flies, Jar Flies, Bush Cicada (Tibicen dorsatus, formerly T. dorsata)
Some cool Tibicen posts and pages you should check out:
- Cicada researcher Kathy Hill’s photo of 18 different Tibicen species.
- It is possible to identify Tibicen just after they have molted: a visual tool to identify freshly molted Tibicens by Paul Krombholz
- Tibicen anatomy page (offsite link).
- Macro videos of a Tibicen by Roy Troutman
- My Tibicen photos, including Marvin, the CicadaMania mascot.
- All Tibicen posts on this website.
- All Tibicen galleries.
An image from Roy Troutman:
My Tibicen video from 1996
Tibicen tibicen (T. chloromerus, T. chloromera)
[...] I just checked Dan Century’s Cicada Mania website (here) to see if he had news of Annual Cicadas. His Community section (here) did have reports of Annual Cicadas from Virginia and New York. He also had a useful post about the most common cicadas of summer in the eastern and midwestern United States, the genus Tibicens (here). [...]
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