Carolyn Kaster/AP file photo
Much of the eastern United States can prepare for what one entomologist described as a “spectacular, macabre Mardi Gras” this spring.
The event Jonathan Larson, an extension entomologist at the University of Kentucky, is referring to is the simultaneous emergence of two cicada broods that will erupt in states from Virginia to Illinois come late April through June.
Periodical cicadas, which have the longest known insect life cycle, spend most of their life underground in an immature nymph form before surfacing from the ground every 13 or 17 years for a brief adult life. A brood constitutes multiple species of cicadas that merge on the same cycle.
“It’s like a graduating class that has a reunion every 17 or 13 years,” says Gene Kritsky, professor emeritus of biology at Mount St. Joseph University and author of A Tale of Two Broods: The 2024 Emergence of Periodical Cicada Broods XIII and XIX.
Although cicadas are a valuable food source for birds and small mammals, in large numbers their deafening calls can be annoying and their carcasses littering the ground can be a nuisance. The last time the Northern Illinois Brood emerged 17 years ago, “they were out in such abundant numbers that Chicagoans were having to remove them with shovels, to clear sidewalks and roads,” said Floyd Shockley, an entomologist and the collections manager for the Department of Entomology at the National Museum of Natural History.
The last time the two broods — Brood XIX and Brood XIII — emerged simultaneously was in…
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