{"id":16753,"date":"2021-05-31T15:24:41","date_gmt":"2021-05-31T22:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/?p=16753"},"modified":"2021-05-31T15:25:08","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T22:25:08","slug":"what-are-the-black-spots-on-the-back-of-a-magicicada-cicada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/what-are-the-black-spots-on-the-back-of-a-magicicada-cicada\/","title":{"rendered":"What are the black spots on the back of a Magicicada cicada?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Black-Spots.jpg\" alt=\"Black Spots\" width=\"624\" height=\"421\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-16754\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Black-Spots.jpg 624w, https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Black-Spots-300x202.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The question I saw most this year (2021) was &#8220;what are the black spots on the back of cicadas for&#8221;? The people asking this question are specifically talking about Magicicada cicadas that have recently molted and are still white\/cream colored and soft (teneral from the Latin word &#8220;tenen&#8221; meaning soft). <\/p>\n<p>The area of the cicada where the black spots appear is called the pronotum &#8212; &#8220;pro&#8221;, meaning <em>before<\/em> in Greek, and &#8220;notum&#8221;, meaning <em>the back<\/em>, also in Greek. Before the back. <\/p>\n<p>The spots contain a pigment that will gradually spread throughout a cicada body as it hardens, and transforms from white to black.<\/p>\n<p>People speculate that the two black spots resemble eyes, and that might scare away predators. This might be possible, but I haven&#8217;t read anything to substantiate the hypothesis. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The question I saw most this year (2021) was &#8220;what are the black spots on the back of cicadas for&#8221;? The people asking this question are specifically talking about Magicicada cicadas that have recently molted and are still white\/cream colored and soft (teneral from the Latin word &#8220;tenen&#8221; meaning soft). The area of the cicada [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,675],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-magicicada","category-teneral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}