Cicada ManiaPeople have started asking for Brood XIII shirts and other stuff like mugs and pillows, so I made them. The cicadas will be in the ground for about 2 months but the shirts are here. I recommend that you don’t buy one unless you see (and hear) the actual cicadas. Otherwise it’s like wearing a Bahamas t-shirt without ever going there. 🙂
Here’s an audio clip of Magicicadas:
You could try this with northern Magicicada periodical cicadas, but I would avoid it for southern states like Louisiana (because you’ll get negative numbers, which will be confusing). Also, do not use temperature data from past years, because the weather is wildly variable and you’ll get a useless number.
Gene Kritsky was nice enough to send a paper he wrote with a formula for predicting the emergence date. E = (19.465 – t)/0.5136, where E = emergence start date in May and t = average April temperatures in °Celsius. His formula worked like a charm for predicting the Brood X emergence in Cincinnati. 80% of his sites had begun the emergence on the predicted date of May 14th of that year. Also when the ground temperature reaches a consistent ° Celsius that is another good sign the emergence is about to begin.
Try it out:
Updated: we updated the form to accept 3 numbers past the decimal in case you have super-precise temperature information.
To find the Average Mean Temperature in Celsius on the Weather Underground site:
Thanks to Roy Troutman and Gene.
Weird Meat: Cicadas in Jinan. Weird Meat is a blog about non-Western food (no cows and chickens) like cicadas. Check it out.
So minutes later, we had a huge plate of fried bugs. I’d say about a hundred of these little bite-size insects were deep-fried crispy. Everyone liked them. Even my friend Boya from Texas, usually not as adventurous a diner, enjoyed them.
Cicadas in Illinois, 13 or 17 Year “Locust”? — this page features a brood map of Illinois that shows you the general area where they’ll appear.
CicadaMobile hits the road, and article in the Daily Herald by Mike Zawislak. The Lake County Forest Preserve District has hired a cicada expert to travel around, educating people about cicadas. Awesome.
Starting April 16, the forest preserve district’s Cicada Mobile will be motoring to schools, festivals, farmers markets and other community gatherings through July. The program is free.
Thanks to Roy Troutman for passing this along.
The 7th International Film Festival of Insects is happening in October:
The Languedoc-Roussillon Department of Insects and their Environment (OPIE-LR), organizers of the International Insect Film Festival invite you to submit your audiovisual projects.
Our aim is to develop scientific mediation, to promote interest in invertebrate life and generally to encourage biodiversity through the medium of film. This is the role to be played by the unique international audiovisual competition, focusing on insects and other continental invertebrates.
FIFI will accept all work (documentaries, fiction, cartoons…) created since 2003.
The deadline for applications is the 30th April 2007. Judging will take place in the National History Museum of Paris on the 16th, 17th and 18th May.
The international jury and the youth jury, along with the public will award 5 trophies and a grand prize of 1,500 euro.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us directly or via our website http://festivalfifi.opielr.org for further information, for rules and regulations or for an application form.
This festival presents the opportunity to mingle with a host of world players in the field of insects, directors, producers, scientists, artists, naturalists and financial players. We would be delighted to welcome you to this forum of meeting and exchange.
There’s plenty of cicada video on YouTube.
This post is originally from early 2007 when Youtube was young. I’ve updated it with a more recent video:
I just received a Cicada And Lanternfly display from My-Bugs.com and I couldn’t be happier with it. The display is gorgeous: wood frame, glass on front and back, and 10 wonderful cicadas and lantern flies within. Worth twice the price. Looks exactly like this:
Lantern Flies are closely related to cicadas, are usually more colorful and are called Lantern Flies because of the lantern-like extension of their head.
An interesting article sent to us by Roy Troutman: Periodic Cicadas Help Scientists Study Superfast Muscle.
for scientists at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the periodic cicada also offer clues about how high-speed and high- performance muscles work, and how this knowledge might someday make human muscle work better.