This spring, billions of cicadas will dig their way out of the soil across most of the Midwest and Southeast, filling the air with their cacophonous soundtrack. Starting in late April, two major broods of cicadas that show up on 13- and 17-year cycles will crawl out of the soil and head to treetops to sing and mate. It’s the first time these two broods have emerged at the same time in 221 years. The males will die almost immediately after mating. The females will live just long enough to build nests in the trees and lay eggs. By the time those eggs hatch, the adults will have died, and the young “nymphs” will burrow back underground, starting the cycle again. This many cicadas emerging at once is like spotting a rare comet, said Zach Schumm, an insect diagnostician at Iowa State University. “This is a really weird phenomenon that we only get to see a few times in our lives,” Schumm said. There are many species of annual cicadas that are spotted every summer across much of the country. Then, there are periodical cicadas that come in waves. The seven species of periodical cicadas show up on 13- or 17-year cycles, spending most of their lives underground, but their chorus could be louder this year when their life cycles sync up for the first time in centuries.
Source: KCUR News
