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| Photo by Sofia Tomov |
File this under geeky nature nerd news!
Last Wednesday, Jen Roder, Lauren Bird and Ben Nanny noticed curious gold-winged cicadas on and around a sycamore just outside the staff entrance at the Visitor Center. Ben recognized them. He had seen lots of them in May 2004. They were Brood X (10) of 17-year cicadas but the math wasn't right. They shouldn't reappear at Ijams until 2021.
Jen took the lead and got in touch with the national cicada watch group (Click: Cicada Mania). The big question: What was going on?
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| Photo by Sofia Tomov |
Their speculation was that it was Brood X "stragglers"—an odd appellation considering they were "four years early," said Volunteer Naturalist Rich Henighan. "Shouldn't they be called the 'Vanguard' instead?" he quipped.
Jen located a small plastic box of dead cicadas collected by Stephen Lyn in 2004 and made a second discovery. Unbeknownst to our kindly senior naturalist, thirteen years ago, Ijams actually had two species of 17-year cicadas emerge at the same time: Magicicada septendecium. and probably Magicicada cassini.
The mystery deepened. Did we have two species emerging early or just one?
Or was it a separate population of 2017's Brood VI, displaced?
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| Photo by Sofia Tomov |
Ijams quickly cobbled together a pop-up program last Sunday about cicadas in general and 17-year cicadas in specific. Thanks to all who attended our Cicad-Academy and to the Goodalls for bringing cicada-cake.
The workshop began indoors with basic cicada information and adjourned outdoors for the fun part: looking for the red-eyed, gold-winged hemipterans.
Early in an emergence, it's almost exclusively males. Later the females join them. Saturday we were finding them low to the ground on shrubs and forbs, by sunny Sunday they had moved to the treetops and were starting to call.
Our search turned up several shed exoskeletons and multiple adults. Jud even climbed high into a sycamore by the Plaza Pavilion and shook a branch to dislodge more to inspect.
Sofia Tomov, one of our junior naturalists who is all grown up now, got some excellent photos.
More to follow as we learn more.
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| Education Director Jen Roder inspecting cicadas collected in 2004. |
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| Dear senior naturalist, "You actually collected two different species in 2004!" Said Roder |
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| Photo by Sofia Tomov |
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| Jen Roder with Lynne Davis and Sharon Burnett inspect a cicada to determine gender and species. |
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| Joseph with shed cicadas exoskeletons |
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| Cicada hunters |
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| Jud literally up the tree to shake down cicadas |
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| Goodall's cicada cake |
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