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August 12, 2016

Watch a Swamp Cicada shed its skin

Filed under: Neotibicen — Dan @ 6:30 am

Here’s a video I made this week. It is a Neotibicen tibicen tibicen (formerly Tibicen chloromera) shedding its skin as it enters the final phase of its development. The video is in 4K HD, but you have to fuss with the YouTube interface to see it at that resolution (good luck). Each frame represents a 30 sec time span.

Spoilers:

At 18 seconds its head pops out of its old skin.

At 27 seconds it frees its wings.

At 51 seconds it flips and unfurls its wings.

At 85 seconds it moves its wings into place.

At 100 seconds you can see pigment pulse through the cicadas mesonotum:

meso

Here’s another video from last night:

2 Comments »

  1. Wayne says:

    I have at least 5 a nite at present time on my hard maple in back yard. Is such fun to watch what GOD has created

  2. Gale Burks says:

    I told my husband that I heard really loud cicadas and he told me they were locusts. Your video beautifully proved me right. Thanks!

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