The giant cicada, Quesada gigas, has returned to Texas after 50 years!
Here’s a link:
Giant Cicada / Chicharra Grande
Thanks to Roy Troutman and Mike Quinn.
Bonus:
Category: Genera
Genera of cicadas.
In a few weeks you might see some Magicicada stragglers in areas that saw the Brood X emergence back in 2004. If you see any, let us know.
Update: some exciting news in the comments (before I accidentally deleted the original article):
Our 2006 straggler hunt has been very successful— much more successful than our 2005 Brood XI hunt.
Our group found M. septendecim (XIII), M. tredecassini (XIX), M. tredecim, M. neotredecim, M. tredecassini, and M. tredecula (XXIII), and unidentified nymphal skins, as well as a possible M. cassini (X) straggler— all on a 3-day Midwestern trip. Although most sightings consisted of isolated or small numbers of individuals, two emergences— one at Moody Cemetary in Greene-Sullivan State Forest, Indiana (mostly M. neotredecim), and one at the Vectren Energy plant entrance, near Yankeetown (east of Evansville) IN (mostly M. tredecassini) were substantial enough that there were periods of continuous calling. Not bad for an “off” year!
Complete records will be incorporated into the Magicicada database on Cicada Central as soon as some server issues are solved. If you have records that you’d like to put in the database, send the details (species present, approximate numbers of individuals), the complete locality info (including lat. and lon. if you have it), the date, and your complete name to me at the University of Connecticut (email is just firstname.lastname@uconn.edu).
John Cooley
Categories
Okanagana from Carlsbad, CA
This photo was taken on May 28th, in Carlsbad, CA by Rebecca. Thanks Rebecca!
Originally I had this labeled as O. rimosa, but it is not.
Categories
Four new Roy Troutman Galleries!
We have four new Roy Troutman galleries of restored images from the 1980’s and early 1990’s!
NEW! Roy Troutman’s Cicada Photos. Assorted cicadas photos from the 1980s!
NEW! Roy Troutman’s Cicada Photos. Brood X photos from 1987 and 1988
NEW! Roy Troutman’s Cicada Photos. Brood XIV cicada photos from 1990-91
I came across this article thanks to Google’s news alerts: UC Engineering Researchers Find Mercury In Cicadas. I’ve never eaten a cicada and I don’t plan on doing so in the future, but a lot of “cicada maniacs” do, so here’s your PSA.
Think twice before you eat one of Cincinnati’s Brood-X cicadas. That’s the warning from researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Engineering, who have found surprising levels of mercury in these insects.
Way back in July a man by the name of Samuel Orr mailed me a DVD trailer of a film he had a part in making called Return of the 17-Year Cicadas. At the time my reaction was “I am simply blown away by its excellence. That might be the best cicada video I’ve seen so far”. Somehow I let it slip through the cracks and I forgot to write about it. In the mean time the movie has won first prize in the Non-Interactive Media category of the 2005 Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. I’m sure once the film reaches a wider audience — perhaps PBS or the Animal Planet channel (hint! hint!) — it will win more awards.
Read all about the new, award winning cicada documentary Return of the 17-Year Cicadas on the excellent EurekAlert! Science Reporting Alert website. Make sure you download and watch the video too. It is incredible.
Thanks to Roy and Dona for reminding me to post something about this film.
Bill from Lincoln, Nebraska sent us this awesome photo of a cicada. I’ve never seen a cicada quite like this one. It’s as pretty as a butterfly. My guess is it belongs to the genus Diceroprocta, but I don’t know what species it is. Anyone know? If so, leave your guess in the comments section below.
Tim McNary wrote:
The cicada you pictured is either Tibicen dealbatus or Tibicen dorsatus. It’s kind of hard to tell from a picture. If you found it in trees in town, it is probably T. dealbatus. If you found in grassy sandhills and the pronotum in swollen in profile it is probably T. dorsatus. The characture that Davis uses, the shape of the uncus, is actually unreliable.
David and Gerry said it was a Tibicen dorsatus (formerly T. dorsata).
Someone asked how loud Neotibicens were in terms of decibels. According to the University of Florida Book of Insect Records the Tibicen resh has a maximum sound pressure level of 107.2db, and the Tibicen pronotalis has a max SPL of 108.9db. Other species of Tibicen seem to max out around 80-100db.
Bonus unrelated link:
A French Canadian Tibicen page (thanks Roy).
Categories
A cicada and an leafhopper
Here’s a cute image for you: a cicada and its cousin, the leafhopper, in the same picture. If you look closely, you’ll see they look alike. Cicadas and leafhoppers belong to the same superfamily called Cicadoidea. Cicadas belong to the family Cicadidae, and leafhoppers belong to the family Cicadellidae.
Categories
Identify the cicada!
Update: Gerry Bunker nailed it: it’s a Neotibicen superbus. Notice that the “McDonald’s Arch” is separated.
Here’s a challenge for all you cicada maniacs: identify this cicada! Even I don’t know what it is. Place your guesses in the Comments (see link below).
The photo was taken by Elise Solloway in Oklahoma in August of this year.