They`re back: 17-year cicadas to swarm the East Coast
Baku, May 9 (AZERTAC). Colossal numbers of cicadas, unhurriedly growing underground since 1996, are about to emerge along much of the East Coast to begin passionately singing and mating as their remarkable life cycle restarts.
This year heralds the springtime emergence of billions of 17-year periodical cicadas, with their distinctive black bodies, buggy red eyes and orange-veined wings, along a roughly 900-mile stretch from northern Georgia to upstate New York The cacophonous mating music they produce, along with the unusual synchronous mass emergence and long development cycles, have amazed scientists and laypeople alike for centuries In central Connecticut, particularly dense concentrations of so-called Brood II cicadas, named Magicicada septendecim, should arrive in late May or June, says Chris Maier, entomologist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven. This will be Maier`s third time studying their emergence; he tracked them in 1979 and again in 1996. He said they are next due in 2030, when he will be 81 years old. Maier said the first scientific recording of Brood II specimens was in 1843. The precisely timed arrival of the 1.5-inch, plant-sucking, flying adults takes place after a long period of development underground as juveniles. After maturing, males begin what cicadas may be best known for: their conspicuous acoustic signals, or "songs," to sexually attract females. "When there`s a lot of them together, it`s like this hovering noise. It sounds exactly like flying saucers from a 1950s movie," Chris Simon, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, said Thursday. When they suddenly emerge, the cicadas will be visible "on the sides of the trees, on the sides of the house, on the shrubbery — even on the car tires," Simon said. Magicicada population densities — from tens of thousands of cicadas per acre to 1.5 million per acre — are much higher than they are with other cicada species.
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