posted December 27, 2003 09:06 AM         

But if you feel about them as I do snakes in my flower beds, here`s a big hug. It is so hard to feel amiable towards them when they scare the crap out of you

juniperb

posted December 27, 2003 05:32 PM         

given how Linda loved ants, I wonder how she'd feel about these cicadas.

posted December 28, 2003 07:45 PM         

That humming, buzzing chorus of insects heard on summer nights is usually due to cicadas -- small, stout-bodied, large-headed insects with sucking mouth parts. Cicadas are usually green with red and black markings. They are an inch or more in length and have 2 pair of wings. Cicadas also have a 3-jointed beak, an abdomen of six segments, prominent compound eyes, and three eyes (ocelli).

Range
Mojave, Great Basin, Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts throughout the southwest.

Habitat
Desert, grasslands and woodlands up to 5,000 feet.

Description
Cicadas are of the Family Cicadidae, Order Homoptera. They represent the genera Magicicada and Tibicen. About 1,500 species of cicadas are known, usually occupying deserts, grasslands and forests. More than 100 species are found in North. The Dog-Day Cicada (Tibicen) appears yearly in midsummer, but there are also periodic cicadas. The most common of these is the black and green Harvest Fly, which matures in two years.

The best-known of these is the 17-Year Cicada (Magicicada), which lives only in the United States. After 17 years of dormancy underground, this species emerges for 5 weeks of activity in the sunlight, and then dies. With the exception of the termite queen, this cicada is probably the longest living insect. The 17-year Cicada is often incorrectly called the 17-year Locust. True locusts are grasshoppers.

Life Cycle
From June through September, adult males sit in treetops throughout much of North America producing rhythmic ticks, buzzes or whines to attract females. These "songs" result from the vibration of their drum-like abdominal membranes (timbals).

Different species of cicadas can be recognized by differences in their songs, behavior and morphology. Males of each species make three distinct types of sound -- courtship, disturbance and congregational, which varies according to daily weather fluctuations.

After mating, females deposit eggs in slits they cut into twigs and branches. One female lays from 200 to 600 eggs and such activity can sometimes injure ornamentals. Eggs hatch into nymphs, which drop to the ground and burrow into the soil as much as 6 feet. Here they suck juices from roots of perennial trees and shrubs. Depending upon the species, cicada nymphs remain underground from 1 to 17 years.

Then by instinct they leave their burrows to climb the trunk of a tree. Their skins split open, and mature cicadas emerge. Emergence almost always occurs on the same night, although the eggs were laid over a period of weeks years earlier. With the cicada's song, the cycle begins anew.

Behavior
The loud noise of the male's chorus may repel birds, the cicada's chief predators, but it probably attracts their other primary predator, the King Hornet or "cicada killer" -- a wasp second in size only to the great Pepsis wasp. These wasps sting adult male cicadas, then carry the paralyzed bodies to their burrows upon which the female deposits an egg. The wasp grub hatches and consumes the cicada prior to entering the its own larval stage.

Cicadas don't fly when their body temperature is below 72° F, but maintain full motor control up to 116° F. On very hot desert days, they congregate on the shaded sides of plants and rocks. Their preference for the desert heat provides them an advantage, since most predators don't hunt at midday.

If you wanna see their pic, here's the link:
http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/july/papr/du_cicada.html

posted December 29, 2003 11:02 AM         

Silverbells, here they only appear in the dog days of August. Only when it`s very hot and humid. The oldtimers say if they sing in late evening, tomorrow is another scorcher. My kitty, Golddigger, loves to eat them; dead or alive.

juniperb

posted January 01, 2004 08:56 PM         

That was some kind of information trillian. It is good to know that they have been studied, it makes them feel less like a plague. I did not know that they had sucking parts, that is gross.
From my memory, they are about two inches long.

I have three cats now, so I feel better, they won't get past my hunter: Moonie. He's gonna get them!!! You know, instead of the hot days I think I might prefer them to be around when it's cool; at least I would be more comfortable while I am running from them.

posted March 12, 2004 11:05 AM         

By DAN LEWERENZ, Associated Press Writer

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - After 17 years of relative quiet, Mother Nature is bringing the noise. Periodical cicadas, a species of the grasshopper-like insects best known for the scratching, screeching "singing" of the males, will emerge this May, filling forests in more than a dozen states. Almost as abruptly as they arrive, they'll disappear underground for another 17 years.

"Why do certain insects take only one year to develop, and others take two or three? It's just part of their genetic programming," said Greg Hoover, senior extension entomologist for Penn State University.

There are at least 13 broods of 17-year cicadas, plus another five broods that emerge every 13 years. The last to emerge, Brood IX, was seen last spring in parts of West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina.

This year, it's time for Brood X, the so-called "Big Brood," to surface. Its range stretches from Georgia, west through Tennessee and to isolated pockets of Missouri, north along the Ohio Valley and into Michigan, and east into New Jersey and New York.

"This is one of those years we kind of dread," said Paris Lambdin, professor of entomology and plant pathology at the University of Tennessee. "We had an emergence a couple years ago around Nashville, but nothing like what we expect this one will be."

No other periodical cicada covers so much ground. And with hundreds of them per acre in infested areas, the noise will be hard to miss.

"In 1987, coming back from the University of Maryland on Interstate 95, when you drove through a wooded area you could hear the insects," Hoover said. "This would have been mid to late June, with the windows down, and then it would shut down when you got to a field or a non-wooded area."

In rare years, a 13-year brood can emerge to add its collective voice to that of a 17-year brood.

"Out in the Midwest is where things get really hairy," Hoover said. "Missouri, Illinois, Indiana have combinations of 17-year-brooded individuals and 13-year-brooded individuals, and they can have overlap."

There's no question that the class of 2004 will be a nuisance. The cicadas will make plenty of noise, and adults are poor fliers that tend to bump into things.

But as swarms go, these cicadas aren't that bad. Adults don't feed on leaves, so they won't strip the trees, but they do lay their eggs in twigs.

"The females, once mated, will lay pockets of eggs along twigs that will cause structural weakening of those twigs," Hoover said. "Eventually they may drop off and fall to the ground, the nymphs will drop off and fall to the soil, and that's where this species is for the next 17 years."

___

posted March 12, 2004 12:13 PM         

The noise was kinda hypnotic from what I can remember, but they didn't really bother me - I was a little tomboy so I thought, "cool, bugs that incubate in the ground for years - WOA!"

It's the walking around in the backyard w/ the constant crunching of cicadas and shells that I recall being gross/nervewracking.

posted May 15, 2004 09:59 AM         

Latest Developments

Pediatrician Warns Parents About Cicadas
(Reuters) - First there was the girl who fell off her bike fleeing a flying cicada. Then a boy trying to swat a cicada out of the air with a baseball bat instead hit his friend in the nose. The final straw came when another child hurt his hand trying to squish a cicada under a car's tires. Dr. Ray Baker of Cincinnati Children's Hospital was convinced -- cicadas can be a safety hazard to children. Starting this week and lasting into June, billions and possibly even trillions of cicadas will emerge across much of the eastern half of the United States. More..


http://news.yahoo.com/fc?tmpl=fc&cid=34&in=science&cat=animals_and_insects

posted June 01, 2004 12:16 AM         

They are a bit hazardous. I heard about this lady who hit a fire hydrant because of a cicada and my friend was telling me how her friend was driving through this neighborhood and a cicada flew onto the dashboard and she stopped the car and jumped out and this guy who witnessed the whole thing had to come and take the cicada out of the car. My mom told me that the last time they were here she had to make sure that she held onto my hand at all times to keep from running out into the street away from the cicadas. I have had to run a couple of times but it' been pretty cool this time around.

posted June 01, 2004 12:26 AM         

Much love and lite to you thru the season.

I totally understand because if snakes hatched out in a herd and covered my home, I`m die from fright or wish I had of.

posted June 03, 2004 12:25 PM         

Are you being serious about the sucking mouth parts.. an inch or more in length and have 2 pairs of wings... a 3jointed beak, an abdomen of six segments, prominent compound eyes, and three eyes?????? (thanks trillian)

How horrific for you - I'm bad enough with slugs, maggots and Maybugs - uuurrgh.. Maybugs .. huge things that get tangled in ya hair!! pleasant

And they jus fly around 'en mass??'