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Waiting for the Swarm
Sometime in the next couple of weeks parts of the East Coast will be descended on by trillions of cicadas.
Cicadas.
The phenomenon, unique to the eastern part of the United States, is spectacular, annoying, and awesome…especially for the birds, raccoons, foxes, etc.
What are Periodical Cicadas?
There are seven species of periodical cicada. These species practice a specific reproduction strategy called predator satiation.
By emerging all at once in a single year in huge numbers, they make it impossible for predators to eat all of them…and they do have a lot of predators.
Each emergence, called a brood (This years is particularly fun because it’s Brood X, X is ten here, but…gotta love the implications) consists of trillions of insects.
They mate, lay eggs, then die by the thousands. Those eggs then hatch into larvae which spend the next few years underground living off of tree roots (they suck the sap). Bizarrely, most broods are prime numbers. Brood X is the seventeen year brood, with a range from nothern Virginia up to New York and New Jersey. It also has a western segment that goes up the east side of the Missisippi and includes parts of Georgia, Illinois, Indiana.