The crops are back in 2025, already emerging en masse to announce the approach of summer with their cries. If you live in the East of the United States, prepare to meet (and hear) sink XIV (14), the batch of periodic cicadas this year.
Count XIV’s stars have started to appear in several states, coming out of the underground holes in which they have spent the last 17 years. Now, they will devote all June to mating and egging before dying. Learn more about the life of these noisy insects and what makes the XIV brood so remarkable.
Learn more:: Filming pee streams, the crops will do strange things during the emergence
Stork from south to north
Periodic scar is made up of Seven speciesfalling under 15 broods which emerge every 13 or 17 years. They are not the same as the annual cicadas, which arrive each summer in much smaller numbers and do not have the same synchronized development.
Most of the years, a brood of periodic cicadas appears above the ground. However, 2024 was an extraordinary year for cicadas because two adjacent broods (XIII and XIX) overlapped. The Rare Double Envisor event was a must, because the next double-design will not occur before 2037 (IX and XIX will emerge together, but they are not adjacent).
The XIV brood of this year – a 17 -year -old brood – will not bring as many cigada chaos as last year, but its range is undoubtedly impressive. The cicadas will appear mainly in the Midwest and the South, with a large concentrated band from the south of Ohio, through Kentucky and Tennessee. Their prevalence in Kentucky led some to designate the XIV brood as the “brood of Bourbon”.
The crops in the XIV brood will also appear as far south as the North Georgia and as far from the North as Long Island, New York and Cod Cod, Massachusetts.
Brood XIV is remarkable for being the second largest brood after XIX, a 13 -year -old brood called “the large southern brood”. The XIV brood is also considered the ancestral group from which all the other 17 -year -old broods have been shaped. This brood occupies a special place in history, because its ancestors were recorded for the first time by the pilgrims of the colony of Plymouth in 1634.
Understand the Cigale life cycle
Bike in XIV brood were seen above the ground in 2008; Those who lived at the time laid the eggs that have now become full -fledged cicadas that emerge this year.
THE Cigale life cycle Start when the eggs located underground hatch in the nymphs, which eat the liquid of the roots of the trees. The nymphs undergo five juvenile stages over the years, lead to each stage. They end up crawling out of the exit tunnels and find a place to chew one last time, marking the beginning of adulthood.
Once the exoskeleton of the adult scar is, they then focus on mating. The males climb trees and produce their trendy songs in mass, using muscles to vibrate a rigid part of their exoskeletons called tymbals. After mating, a female cicada lays over 600 eggs that will hatch after six to ten weeks, long after the death of all adults. The newborn nymphs will then fall from the trees and burst underground to start the cycle again.
The problem with the trap
The monitoring and mapping of periodic cicadas of each brood is a continuous process which must be updated almost every year. The majority of the broods come out in time, but it turns out that not all cicadas are impeccable in their stopwatch.
A factor that complicates monitoring efforts is the existence of laggardstoring that emerges earlier or later that their brood is supposed to do so. Starts arriving at the wrong time could potentially mix with separate and adjacent broods, causing a flow of genes.
For example, this year’s concern is that previous broods may have latecomers who appear late and mix with the XIV brood. These latecomers could come from the x -up, which emerged 4 years ago (and the trap tends to emerge 1 or 4 years after their parent brood).
There are generally not many laggarts for a given year, and they are often chosen quickly by predators. However, some survive and influence the nearby broods that emerge in time, which can eliminate the data that scientists collect.
Beyond the inevitable racket they will create, the cicadas are entirely harmless. They do not bite or bite, but at the very least, prepare for a strong month to come.
Learn more:: From the scratch orange, there are 7 different species of cicadas
Article Sources
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Jack Knudson is a deputy editor -in -chief to discover with a strong interest in environmental sciences and history. Before joining Discover in 2023, he studied journalism at the Ohio University Scripps College of Communication and previously interned at Recycling TODAY magazine.
