The folks behind the Your Wild Life website are hoping people will collect cicadas and send them to them for a science project to see how Urbanization impacts periodical cicadas.
They want samples from forests, from cities, from suburbs, from farms — in other words, across a gradient from low to high urbanization.
It isn’t often that cicada celebrities show up on your Mother’s lawn, but when you have a healthy supply of easily catchable singing M. septendecim, and a cicada website, these things happen.
Last Saturday I met up with cicada researcher John Cooley, Japanese cicada researcher Jim Yoshimura, and musician and professor David Rothenberg at Roosevelt Park in Edison NJ. They were looking for male cicadas to perform with David at a World Science Festival event in the Bronx later that night. New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell was also there to interview David and John, and artist Asher Jay was there to lend David support.
The cicadas in the park weren’t performing well enough, so I directed them to my Mom’s place in Metuchen.
The Metuchen location yielded many screaming cicadas. David collaborated with the cicadas on the spot with his Ani-Moog iPad app, and a clarinet. John Cooley dropped some cicada science for Stephen Farrell’s video camera as well. My Mom served refreshments. Once enough cicadas were collected, the cicada celebrities departed — before leaving David left my Mom an autographed book and CD. Very cool!
A beautiful day for enjoying the song of cicadas in the suburbs of New Jersey.
More from David Rothenberg:
David Rothenberg plays Animoog on iPad live with cicadas:
John Cooley of Cicadas @ UCONN 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
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.
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 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.
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.
Today Elias Bonaros and I surveyed Magicicada populations along the Staten Island shore at Wolfe’s Pond Park. The shore in this area took a serious beating from tropical storm Sandy. Everyone interested in the cicada populations in this area feared the worst for the cicadas. I’m happy to say that many cicadas survived and are currently singing in the location.
What is most amazing is even the cicadas along the eroded shoreline survived. Their exit holes can be seen in the soil along the beach, and even along the vertical face of the eroded soil.
Some video:
More photos:
Cicada holes along eroded shore line:
Cicada hole in eroded shore line with nymph exuvia:
Roy Troutman, Gene Kritsky and his wife Jess witnessed a Magicicada emergence in Finneytown Ohio tonight. It is believed that this could be an acceleration of a new Brood VI, or an eight year acceleration of Brood X.
From Roy:
We had an unexpected emergence in parts of the Cincinnati area last night & I got some pics with my new Canon t4i. Gene [Kritsky] & his wife Jess came out to witness it as well. I would say hundreds emerged in a very small suburb of Cincinnati called Finneytown. This could be 4 year acceleration of the new brood VI that Gene has been talking about verifying in 2017 or 8 year acceleration of Brood X.
My friend Nicole DiMaggio sent us these photos of adult Magicicadas taken in Iselin NJ. The emergence is just getting started in New Jersey, and will really kick off next Tuesday when the temps hit the 80s.
These photos of adult Magicicada cicadas were taken in Westfield, NJ by Jim Occi on May 16th.
This photo is particularly interesting as the cicadas’s wings were damaged during the ecdysis (molting) process and its tymbal (the ribbed structure that makes the cicada’s sound) is clearly exposed:
These photos of a Magicicada undergoing ecdysis (moulting) in Madison, NC are by photographer Heather James.
Click thumbnail images to see progressively larger versions of the images:
The “white strings” connecting the teneral (soft) adult cicada to its exuvia (shell, skin) are the old lining of the cicada’s trachea (the tubes through which it breathed).
