They won’t be here long, and once gone, you won’t get a chance to see them again for nearly 20 years.
The 17-year cicada is emerging this year in and around Surry County, rising from the ground, shedding their exoskeletons, mating, and then the newborns are hatching, crawling into the ground where they will essentially hibernate for the next 17 years.
Doesn’t sound like much of a life cycle, but it’s one that’s evolved over time as a way for the insects to avoid predators.
Joanna Radford, Surry County extension agent for agriculture and natural resources, said there are essentially 30 broods, or large groups, of the cicadas spread among the Eastern United States. Each brood, she explained, is spread over a specific geographic area, with all the members of that group largely on the same cicadian clock as the rest of their brood.
Scientist who study creatures such as cicadas actually number, then keep track of, each brood. The one hatching in Surry County this year is brood number 9.
“We were one of the anticipated counties that would be seeing the cicadas this year,” she said of the emerging insect — some of which have been covering shrubs, trees, even parts of local residents’ porches. “(This brood) is in parts of Virginia and North Carolina right now, basically the northwestern section of North Carolina.”
Radford said the typical schedule is for the cicadas to begin emerging from the ground in mid-May, which is about the time local residents began reporting the bugs.
“We’ll probably see them until the end of June.”
Or, more appropriately, hear them. Cicadas are widely known for two things — those crusty, hollow exoskeletons they leave behind on trees, and their almost-deafening, high-pitched noise the males make. One or two of them making the noise isn’t that loud, but when many are in the trees making the sound, it seems to fill the air, reverberating all around.
Other than the distracting noise, however, Radford said there’s little harm the cicadas cause. They do not swarm crops nor devour plants as locusts do.
She said the life cycle is fairly simple — the insect digs its way from underground, leaving little volcano-shaped holes, climbs a tree, sheds its exoskeleton (a process similar, she said, to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly), and then the males start their high-pitched call as a mating noise, hoping to attract females. Once mated, Radford said the female will lay up to 500 eggs, in batches of 10 to 25, in little slits it will cut into tree limbs, a process that takes place over several weeks.
The eggs will hatch in two-and-a-half to three weeks, with the larva making its way to the ground, where it will burrow, perhaps eat some roots, before going into hibernation for 17 years.
The adults, what most people are seeing now, are big, some more than an inch long, “with large beady eyes. They are kind of odd looking, because their eyes are so big,” Radford said.
She said people shouldn’t worry about them.
“Most of the time there’s no need to try to control them,” she said, emphasizing that they post almost no danger. “The biggest fear would probably be on younger trees, if there’s enough of them, if they make enough slits it’s possible they could damage the plant.”
If, for some reason, you happen to miss them this year, you still have a chance to catch a similar show. Brood 19 is a 13-year cicada scheduled to next hatch across North Carolina in 2024, and there are always a few non-brood cicadas hatching on an annual basis.
But for Brood 9, the really loud 17-year cicadas? You’ll be waiting a while for a return engagement.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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