Dedicated to cicadas, the most amazing insects in the world.
Genera of cicadas.
Plenty of pictures of cicadas in their nymph instar, but no adults yet. Waiting for photos…
Cicada recipe 1 courtesy of Kirk Moore. Get your kitchens ready!!! It’s almost cicada cookin’ time. (the idea of cooking cicadas makes me ill)
They’re heeere … : Area prepares for the return of cicadas. Note: the photo of the cicada is not a Magicicada, it’s a Tibicen.
So far we have Bull Valley, a possible in Lake Bluff, and Highland Park…
If you see cicadas don’t forget to take photos. Put them up on Flickr, the free photo sharing service, and use the broodxiii tag so others can find your Brood XIII cicadas. If you can, take a picture of a cicada with a newspaper or print out this web page and take a picture of the cicadas with that (for date reference).
Don’t forget to take video too, and put that video up on YouTube!
Earlier than expected, here’s some pictures of emerging cicadas in Highland Park, IL.
May 22nd is the date they were predicted to emerge, but thanks to warm weather and other factors…
Somebody asked for a picture of a cicada they can color with Crayons. Here you go: Magicicada Coloring Sheet PDF. You need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it on Windows, and Macs will display it without an extra plug-in.
Here’s what it looks like when you print it out:
If you’re looking for historical information about previous brood emergences try Cicada Central’s Magicicada Database. Click on the link that reads Magicicada Database and then follow the instructions (hint: search for the 13 (XIII) brood and the year 1990).
Rene reported ]that she saw Magicicada nymphs in holes in a friend’s garden in SE Elmhurst Illinois.
We’re currently expecting the emergence to start on May 24th, but the hot weekend might have roused the cicadas to an early start. We’ll see.
The Return of the Cicadas 17-Year cicada documentary will be airing on PBS in the Brood XIII emergence area soon. As soon as next Thursday, 4/26. Set your Tivo/DVR to record it!
Periodical cicadas are among the most unique creatures in the animal kingdom. After spending 17 years underground as juveniles, they emerge for a brief, cacophonous population explosion aboveground, where they transform into adults, mate, lay eggs and die off after only a few weeks.
WFYI presents Return of the Cicadas, an original local documentary produced in association with the Indiana University Research and Teaching Preserve. Producer Samuel Orr followed the life cycle of Brood X, which made its momentous ascension in the spring of 2004. It accounted for one of the largest insect outbreaks on Earth. Many different broods exist, on unique 17-year schedules. Brood XIII is due to arrive in northern Indiana this May.
Through stunning close-up video and time-lapse photography, Orr and others offer an amazing glimpse at the lives of these enigmatic insects. The documentary was made possible by the research of IU biologist Keith Clay through grants provided by the National Science Foundation. The NSF and Science Magazine recognized the production with a national award for a short 5-minute film on the Brood X outbreak.
Santisuk Vibul’ s Cicada Photos of Genus Dundubia from Bagkok, Thailand:
In my spare time (not a lot lately) I’ve been working on Google maps for plotting Magicicada Brood maps. I came up with a brood map for 2004 Brood X, but in it’s current state it’s very processor-intensive because it loads an XML file with about 300 entires, and each entry requires a call to Google. It’s not ready for “prime time” (still alpha, not even beta). I’m going to recode it to work off of longitude and latitude, and that should improve performance.
Hopefully people will mail us their 2007 Brood XIII sightings so I can build a Brood XIII map as well. I might even set up a form that lets people find their location on a map, and then submit it as longitude and latitude rather an actual address (for privacy reasons).
2004 Brood X map.
