Although I should post everything on CicadaMania.com that I post on Facebook and Twitter, sometimes a few items fall through the cracks. Here are my top 10 cicada related tweets of 2013:
December 29, 2013
December 22, 2013
Cicada News for November 2013
There were plenty of cicada sightings in Australia this November, like…
This Masked Devil (Cyclochila australasiae), photo taken by Kipp Droby.
A Cyclochia australiasiae with a “bitza” (little bit of everything) paint job — part Yellow Monday; part Masked Devil, by photographer Alan Davison.
A Green Grocer with many shades to green, by a photographer named Howard.
A nice blog post about Australian cicadas, by the Barnade Goose Paperworks.
A chilling video of a moulting cicada being attacked by ants.
A Redeye Cicada (Psaltoda moerens), photo taken by Michael Doe.
This banana-yellow Yellow Monday:
Tom Katzoulopolopolopolus found this amazingly yellow C. australasiae aka "Yellow Monday" in Galston, NSW, Australia. pic.twitter.com/IOWgKvworD
— Cicada Mania (@cicadamania) November 27, 2013
Double Drummers, like:
@cicadamania what kind of cicada is this? pic.twitter.com/WsNkcvaZfe
— georgie (@GEORGIE132) November 15, 2013
Or a Double Drummer and Razor Grinder:
Or this pair of Urabunana marshalli found south of Coolah, NSW by David Emery:
November 17, 2013
March of the cicadas
Now that is a lot of cicada skins!
November 11, 2013
A moulting cicada in NSW Australia
This cicada photo was taken by photographer Cameron George about 60km south of Sydney Australia. I believe this is a Green Grocer, but I’m not 100% sure. The cicada is attempting to molt.
October 27, 2013
Cicada News for October 2013
Cicada season in Australia is buzzing along. We’re hoping the wildfires around the Sydney area don’t destroy many cicadas.
Here is an article about it: With that buzz in the air, it’s beginning to sound like Christmas.
ITIS is back up after the US Government shutdown.
Paul Harvey Jr has a new cicada-themed fiction book, E: A Tale for Everybody. “E introduces us to Sara, a precocious and curious cicada faced with the anxious reality of so much to learn and do, and so little time to do it.”
The Naked Bloganist, posted many photos of a cicada from Cape Town, South Africa.
Tim McNary of the Bibliography of the Cicadoidea website, let us know that Clidophleps cicadas are also able to create should using a stridulatory structure. Clidophleps is a genus of cicada that can be found in California, Nevada, Arizona, and I assume adjacent parts of Mexico. This is a follow up to the article A third way cicadas make sounds.
July 24, 2013
Cicada Summer Fun
It has been about a month since the last time I saw a Brood II periodical cicada. The Brood II emergence is over, aside from flagging and nymph hatches. That doesn’t mean the cicada fun has to end. Annual species of cicadas are out in the Northern hemisphere. Depending on where you live, you should be able to hear, and if you’re lucky, see annual cicadas.
Tibicen, particularly Tibicen tibicen, the Swamp Cicada, are out in the eastern U.S.
Here’s a cell phone photo of a Tibicen exvuvia (from Middletown, NJ) and a male Tibicen tibicen (found by my sister in Edison, NJ):
Other species are out as well…
Here’s a Tweet and YouTube video featuring a Diceroprocta apache from Arizona:
@cicadamania Can you ID this guy? Found in Chandler, AZ. pic.twitter.com/99ab02rdaI
— Owen McNamara (@pVVEN) July 18, 2013
Summertime cicadas aren’t limited to North America of course. Here is a video of A rock musician’s folk remedy to make cicadas stop singing in Greece:
If you’re on Twitter, follow @Zi_kade for photos of cicadas from Japan. That is the twitter feed by the guy behind the best website for info about the cicadas of Japan: Cicadae in Japan.
You can also follow @cicadamania, which is the feed for this site.
June 4, 2013
Stop the killing of cicadas! Help us fight back.
Stop the killing of cicadas! Help us fight back!
John Cooley of Cicadas @ UCONN (formerly Magicicada.org) let me know that The Home Depot has large Ortho stands that advocate the destruction of periodical cicadas. Here is his tweet on the topic.
This is the Ortho Display at Home Depot.Please do your best to contact Home Depot and Ortho, and encourage them… fb.me/V0m4UCZa
— Team Cicada (@Magicicada1317) June 3, 2013
I went to Lowes to check there as well and they had Sevin brand pesticides with hangtags that specifically mention cicadas. When I saw that in person it took all my willpower not to flip out and make a scene.
How can we stop these companies from advocating the destruction of cicadas? We can call, Tweet, and leave posts on their Facebook pages.
- @HomeDepot on Twitter.
- Home Depot on Twitter
- @Lowes on Twitter.
- Lowes on Facebook
Call your local store and demand they remove signage that advocates the destruction of cicadas. Go to their websites, find their contact us pages, and call and email them.
If you see such displays in other stores, let them know how you feel as well. I will personally boycott these stores and sell any stock I have related to them.
Reasons why destroying cicadas is ridiculous:
Cicadas @ UCONN (formerly Magicicada.org) has a periodical cicada FAQ that features compelling reasons not to destroy these animals.
Here are my reasons:
- How often does an event occur that is as strange, sublime, and fascinating as a periodical cicada emergence? Very rarely. Maybe when a comet arrives. Four or five times in a lifetime, at most.
- You don’t want to rob future generations of the experience of a periodical cicada emergence, do you? You want your grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be able to experience these amazing creatures.
- Urbanization and other stresses are already shrinking Magicicada broods. Why accelerate their demise? Do you want the periodical cicadas to have the same fate as the dodo or passenger pigeon?
- It’s unpatriotic to kill periodical cicadas. Why? They’re only located in the U.S.A. They should be the official insect of the United States of America.
- Pesticides can cause collateral damage to other insect species like honey bees. Like to eat fruit? How about honey? Well, good luck if you help contribute to the acceleration of the death of honey bees. Read more about this topic. I think it would be ironic if a farmer sprayed to kill cicadas, but killed the pollinating insects as well.
- Can cicadas damage or kill small and fruiting trees? I’ve never seen it happen, but it is possible. Did you know that you can net these trees instead of drenching your neighborhood with pesticides? You can. The Magicicada FAQ has a picture of the netting.
- Pets and people love to eat cicadas. Do you want to poison your pets and kids when they eat a cicada treated with pesticide? I hope not.
- Probably the worst part about a periodical cicada emergence is cleaning up their rotting corpses. If The Home Depot and Lowes were smart, they would be selling Shop Vacs instead of chemicals.
- Using pesticides won’t help reduce the amount of time you have to spend cleaning them up. The corpses will pile up either way.
- Cicadas don’t eat fruit and vegetables. Unlike other insects, cicadas lack the mouthparts to chew vegetable matter. Unlike a caterpillar or grasshopper, they won’t eat your tomatoes or other garden vegetables.
I can go on and on…
Please help. Use social media to voice your disgust. Call your local store to ask them to take down anti-cicada signage.
March 28, 2013
Drymopsalta hobsoni, a newly identified cicada in Australia
Drymopsalta hobsoni is a newly identified cicada found in Australia.
Drymopsalta hobsoni sp. nov. is one of three new species of cicada described this year by Tony Ewart and Lindsay Popple.* Tony and Lindsay had participated in a QPWS fauna survey at Bringalily State Forest, near Inglewood in southern inland Queensland. When returning to the site subsequently for a follow-up cicada search, Tony located the new cicada.
Learn more and see photos of this cicada in Robert Ashdown’s article New summer singers.
March 16, 2013
Cicada News for March 2013
There’s going to be a lot of cicada news this year, so I’m going to start publishing a regular cicada news feature. Here is a recap of news for March, so far.
Two articles that are getting a lot of buzz:
The 17-Year Cicadas Are Coming in the Business Insider.
The Cicadas Are Coming! Crowdsourcing An Underground Movement on NPR.
Flying salt shakers of death, written by Angie Macias, is an article about the Massospora fungus that attacks cicadas.
flickr.com/photos/andreas… A wonderful Carineta sp. cicada from Equador
— Cicada Mania (@cicadamania) March 14, 2013
An illustration of the possibly extinct but hopefully not New Forest Cicada. @newforestcicada newforestcicada.info twitter.com/cicadamania/st…
— Cicada Mania (@cicadamania) March 13, 2013
Cicadas’ antibacterial trick may help humans, written by Russell McLendon, is an article about how the structure of cicada wings help them defend themselves from bacteria. “Scientists have found tiny spikes on cicada wings that rupture and kill bacterial cells — a disease-fighting strategy that might also work in manmade materials”.
Japanese woodblock art (ukiyo-e) featuring cicadas ukiyo-e.org/search?q=cicad… twitter.com/cicadamania/st…
— Cicada Mania (@cicadamania) March 2, 2013
January 20, 2013
Orange-speckled green cicada (Lembeja sp nov)
A pretty green speckled cicada from North Sulawesi, Indonesia.
If you can identify the species, let us know.