Cicada Mania

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

June 17, 2006

Magicicada Straggler Watch 2006

Filed under: Magicicada | Periodical Stragglers — Dan @ 2:55 pm

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

Cicada Central.

May 31, 2006

Four new Roy Troutman Galleries!

Filed under: Magicicada | Neotibicen — Dan @ 4:30 am

Magicicada

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

October 25, 2005

UC Engineering Researchers Find Mercury In Cicadas

Filed under: Anatomy | Eating Cicadas | Magicicada — Dan @ 5:43 am

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.

October 11, 2005

Return of the 17-Year Cicadas

Filed under: Magicicada | Pop Culture — Dan @ 8:53 pm

Return of the 17-Year Cicadas 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.

August 7, 2005

Brood X: Year of the Cicada documentary

Filed under: Brood X | Magicicada | Pop Culture | Video — Dan @ 5:53 pm

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.

July 27, 2005

Emergence of Prime Numbers as the Result of Evolutionary Strategy

Filed under: Magicicada | Periodical — Dan @ 4:12 am

Professor Douglas Galvao of the State University of Campinas has written a paper titled Emergence of Prime Numbers as the Result of Evolutionary Strategy. He is hoping to get feedback from the scientific / cicada community.

We investigate by means of a simple theoretical model the emergence of prime numbers as life cycles, as those seen for some species of cicadas.

You can download a PDF version of the paper. Windows users will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it, and Mac users can simply use Preview.

You can contact Prof. Douglas Galvao, as well:

Prof. D.S. Galvao
Head of Applied Physics Department
State University of Campinas
Campinas – Sao Paulo – BRAZIL

July 8, 2005

Straggler pictures from Matt

Filed under: Magicicada | Matt Berger | Periodical Stragglers — Dan @ 11:20 pm

Matt Berger ent us some straggler pictures taken earlier this year:

Matt 2005 Straggler.

Matt 2005 Straggler.

June 27, 2005

Jake is Cicada Maniac

Filed under: Eating Cicadas | Magicicada — Dan @ 5:13 am

From this article in the Shippensberg Sentinel:

Jake Crider takes a bite of a chocolate-covered cicadas. He has kept a container of pre-cooked, frozen periodical cicadas that he harvested last year.

June 10, 2005

$50 Reward for Cicadas

Filed under: Brood XI | John Cooley | Magicicada | Periodical Stragglers — Dan @ 10:07 am

Hey folks, I just got this message from John Cooley, a cicada researcher:

Have I got a deal for you……..see the attached. We’re hoping to
mobilize the cicada fan club to see whether our local brood really
has gone extinct (I think it has- no sightings at last known patch in
1971, 1988, or 2005).

There’s more info about this on Cicada Central— I’ll also consider
some sort of a reward for significant collections of live M.
septendecim stragglers from the eastern part of Brood X, and I’ll
grant the full reward for XI specimens in the CT river valley of MA
and CT, as well as anywhere in RI.

— John Cooley
home page: http://hydrodictyon.eeb.uconn.edu/people/jcooley/

So, if you find a Magicicada in those areas, and have proof, please contact John.

Cooley Reward.

June 6, 2005

Brood X Straggling in Hedgesville WV

Filed under: Gerry Bunker | Magicicada | Periodical Stragglers — Dan @ 7:33 pm

Gerry's Cicada. Gerry's Cicada.

Gerry Bunker sent us these pictures of a straggler from Hedgesville, WV, which he found on June 1st.

Visit Gerry’s excellent cicada web sites for more information:

Massachusetts Cicadas.

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