Category: Genera

Genera of cicadas.

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Brood XIV Magicicada Roy Troutman

Imagining Magicicada

In the coming days I’ll get a lot of emails from people telling me that they’ve found albino cicadas — well, they aren’t albinos, they just haven’t turned black yet. Once a cicada splits its nymph skin and imagines into the adult form, it takes some time for it to turn the familiar black color. Now, if you find a cicada with blue eyes, that’s different, that’s unusual (about 1 in 1000), so we want to hear about that.

This picture was take by Roy Troutman, last night in Batavia Ohio. It’s important to note that this is a Brood XIV straggler and not a Brood XIII cicada.

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Brood XIII Magicicada

Brood XIII News Update, 5/19/2007

Bug spray ineffective on cicadas [Beacon News] “Officials: Pesticides won’t do any good in warding off the bugs”. That’s what I’ve been saying all along. I was watching CNN last night and they said that there are so few bees left in North America to pollinate our food plants, that we have to import our food from South America and China (China!?!). No sense killing any more bees in the process of trying to kill a cicada.

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Brood XIII Magicicada

Brood XIII News Update, 5/17/2007

5 days?

News:

Prepare to be invaded! Teenage cicadas here in time for Memorial Day. Nice picture of a tree trunk covered with cicadas.

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Brood XIV Magicicada Periodical Stragglers Roy Troutman

Brood XIV Stragglers in Ohio

Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Wisconsin aren’t the only states that can look forward to periodic cicadas.

Brood XIV stragglers are beginning to emerge in Ohio. So far we’ve had reports of chimneys from Roy and some photos of nymphs taken by Matt Berger in Terrace Park, Ohio (hopefully he’ll let us post the pics). Stragglers are periodic cicadas the emerge a year or more ahead or behind schedule. Brood XIV is due to emerge in many states next year (KY, GA, IN, MA, MD, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TN, VA, WVA), but a few will emerge this year instead.

Here’s a photo of a cicada chimney taken by Roy Troutman in Ohio.

chimney

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Brood XIII Magicicada

Brood XIII News Update, 5/10/2007

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.

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Brood XIII Magicicada

Emergence Report

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!

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Brood XIII Magicicada

It’s on: Highland Park, IL

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…

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Arts & Crafts Brood XIII Magicicada

Color a Magicicada

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:

Cicada Coloring PDF

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Brood XIII Magicicada

The first Brood XIII sighting (sort of)

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.

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Magicicada Samuel Orr

Return of the Cicadas

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.