Cicada Mania

Dedicated to cicadas, the most amazing insects in the world.

July 1, 2010

Okanagana rimosa nymph skins

Filed under: Elias Bonaros | Okanagana | Proto-periodical — Tags: — Dan @ 10:20 pm

The Okanagana rimosa, also known as Say’s Cicada, is a cicada that can be found in the USA in northern states east of the Rockies, like New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and all New England states. Say’s cicada can also be found in the Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba provinces of Canada.

Say’s Cicada is black and orange; orange legs, orange markings on its mesonotum, and orange bands around most segments of its body. Here’s a photo of an adult:

Okanagana rimosa photo by Natasha from 2005.

A few weeks ago Elias Bonaros sent us some photos of the exuvia (shed skins) of Okanagana rimosa nymphs that he found while searching for cicadas in Western Massachusetts with Gerry from Massachusetts Cicadas. It’s interesting that the black bands that appear around the segments of the nymph’s body are where we see orange bands in the adult form.

Side view

Say’s cicada has a fantastic call that needs to be heard to be appreciated. Visit the Insect Singers website to hear the call of a Okanagana rimosa.

An interesting note about the Okanagana rimosa, it has been showed to have a 9 year life cycle, and appears to be protoperiodical:

“Soper et al (112) showed experimentally that Okanagana rimosa had a life
cycle of 9 years, and that in the field during a 9-year period (1962 to
1970) it was extremely abundant in 4 years and scarce or absent in the
other 5. Heath (32) also studied cicadas of the genus Okanagana and
found several species that appear to be protoperiodical.”

Source.

August 5, 2008

Okanagana bella

Filed under: Matt Berger | Okanagana | Proto-periodical — Tags: — Dan @ 6:02 pm

Matt Berger was backpacking around Yellowstone national park recently when his chanced upon this Okanagana bella:

Okanagana bella

Okanagana bella

More info about the Okanagana bella.

July 30, 2007

Guess the cicada

Filed under: Identify | Okanagana | Proto-periodical — Dan @ 8:53 pm

From Phoebe:

June 2, 2006

Okanagana from Carlsbad, CA

Filed under: Okanagana | Proto-periodical — Dan @ 9:08 am

Okanagana.

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.

August 7, 2005

22 New Tibicen and Okanagana photos!

Filed under: Neotibicen | Okanagana — Dan @ 9:38 pm

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:
Tibicen from 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.

August 1, 2005

Have you seen an unusually large number of cicadas this year?

Filed under: Chris Simon | Community Science | Okanagana | Proto-periodical — Dan @ 7:32 pm

Cicada.

Chris Simon a Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut asked us to post this on our site, and so we did.

Dear Cicadamaniacs,

If you have seen unusually large numbers of cicadas this year (or
last),and have not seen such numbers for a long time, can you please
report them to me? Chris dot Simon at UCONN dot edu? Please report
the location in which you saw the cicada, what month and year, how
long it has been since you have seen a similar emergence magnitude.

This seems to be an unusually good cicada year, maybe related to
unusually wet or otherwise favorable weather:

Dan Johnson from Southern Alberta, Canada reported an outbreak of
Okanagana synodica this year. He says: “I saw only a few between
1983 and 1985, then a few per year in 1986-88, then rare again, then
slightly more in 2000-2003, and only last year did they bloom, and
really with a bang (more than 1000X). My study area is southern
Alberta and Saskatchewan, mainly mixed grass sites in Alberta, plus
fescue foothills.” He had not seen an emergence like this in the 20
years he had worked there.

John Cooley reports Okanagana rimosa and canadensis as being very
dense this year in Northern Michigan and Dan Vanderpool reported that
an unidentified species of cicada was out in Northern Idaho that
residents noted they had never heard before (at least not in big
numbers) and one respondent had lived there for 30 years.

This record was from last year: Eric Toolson of New Mexico writes-
Last year, there was a widespread & heavy emergence of Tibicen
townsendii across a rather large area of central New Mexico
grassland. Prior to that, I knew of only one population in an area
of several hundred square miles, and that occupied an area of only
about 2 hectares. That population has been emerging in good numbers
for over a decade [in this location], but I never saw the species
anywhere else within a distance of several tens of miles in any
direction. I had formed the impression that although T. townsendii
was geographically widespread, its range was occupied by a relatively
few, widely-scattered, discrete populations that were failing to
occupy what seems to be a lot of contiguous suitable habitat.

Cicadas are known for their boom and bust years. It would be nice to
start keeping track of them.

Thanks very much,

Chris

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