East Coast braces for bug onslaught

[Monique]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4638582/?GT1=3391

Planning a May wedding in the eastern United States? Take the party indoors to avoid billions of buzzing cicadas set to swarm the area after 17 years of living below ground.

Called periodical cicadas, the thumb-sized insects emerge every 17 years and fly around in a noisy, mating frenzy before dying weeks later, littering the area with crunchy shells.

Mistakenly called locusts by early settlers, they are distinguished by their beady red eyes. What is most memorable is the deafening noise the males make with drumlike organs called timbals to attract more sedate females.

:surprise: THAT was the thing that scared the life out of me last year, a cicadas and not a cricket It really sounded like someone was breaking open the concrete.. what a noise..

Really weird they have a 17 yr cycle though.

 

[Monique]

As adults, males produce a loud species-specific mate-attracting song using specialized sound-producing organs called tymbals. These sounds are among the loudest produced by any insects.

gosh, who knew..

 

[Moonbear]

I've learned more about those bugs in the last month than I ever needed to know in my lifetime...that's all they've been putting on the news here it seems! The first billion of 5 billion expected have shown up where I live. Other than the thousands of shells left behind from their molting over the past few days (they just came up, and molted their juvenile shells over the past two days...most of it happened yesterday in my yard...one decided to do this on one of my screens, and being the ultimate geek, I sat fascinated for quite some time just watching it emerge from its shell). Then they spent most of yesterday just sitting around, getting their wings stretched out, or whatever it was they were doing, and after being a little dampened by the torrential rains and thunderstorm last night, seem to have gotten themselves into the mood for mating today, so are out there chirping away. I can still identify individual chirps, so it's not so bad yet. I remember last time they were out, it was just a steady drone for half the summer. For a bug, they're kind of cute. There's a rumor going around that there's a reward for finding a blue-eyed cicada (it's just a rumor), so that seems to be keeping all the kids busy looking for one with blue eyes. The birds are also quite happy right now...they've got a real feast out there!

The thing I thought was really cool is that last year, I didn't know the mating season for cicadas was approaching, but I was able to predict some sort of massive bug infestation...all the trees were incredibly prolific in producing seeds and seedlings! Entymologists think it could be the trees that tell the cicadas when it's the right year to emerge since they feed off their roots. Otherwise, maybe we should ask the physicists or astronomers or geologists if there is any other 17-year cycle of events that cicadas could be using as a timing cue.