Cicada ManiaGenera of cicadas.
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).
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.
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.
These are photos from 2005. Neotibicen tibicen tibicen aka Swamp or Morning Cicada. Back in 2005 we called them Tibicen chloromera.
Neotibicen tibicen tibicen that failed to successfully molt:
Neotibicen tibicen tibicen spreading its wings (click for larger image):
A series of photos of a Neotibicen tibicen tibicen molting:
Here’s a fresh picture of a Neotibicen from my backyard:
NEW! Gerry Bunker’s Tibicen Gallery: Photos from Gerry who runs the Massachusetts Cicadas web site.
NEW! Elise Solloway’s Tibicen Gallery: Photos taken southwest of Woodward, Oklahoma, the first week in July 2005
Photo by Elise:
NEW! Sloan Childers’s Tibicen Gallery: Photo taken in Round Rock Texas.
NEW! Natasha’s Okanagana rimosa Gallery: Okanagana rimosa, taken in Edmonton, Alberta.
Director Rohit Colin Rao is getting set to release his documentary Brood X: Year of the Cicada. The documentary focuses on the Brood X emergence of last year. The trailer looks awesome.
Speaking of Brood X, I found a home movie from 2004 on the Internet Archive: Cicadas in Cincinnati, May 2004.