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2024-01-27 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
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What to expect from this year's rare double brood of cicadas
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[BBC] Two broods of cicadas are due to emerge from the ground this April at the same time for the first time in 200 years. It's going to be loud, messy and very interesting.
The last time an event like this happened, Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States – and it's going to be deafening.
Trillions of periodical cicadas are due to make an appearance across the Midwest and Southeast of America this spring, after spending more than a decade burrowed underground. This year, two broods of flying cicadas will emerge at the same time, and it will be the first time they have emerged simultaneously since 1803.
Periodical cicadas have an incredibly long life cycle, unlike their non-periodical brethren which mature each summer. After hatching, the immature periodical cicadas, called nymphs, spend either 13 or 17 years underground, feeding on roots, before squirming their way above ground and transforming into adult cicadas.
The 17-year Brood XIII is due to emerge in Northern Illinois, and the 13-year Brood XIX will emerge in parts of the southeastern US. Both events are due to begin in late April. And for those in the right spot, there is a small area where the broods may potentially overlap. According to researchers at the University of Connecticut, the greatest likelihood of contact between the two broods is in small patches of woodland around Springfield, Illinois.
...Cicada expert and professor emeritus of biology at Mount St Joseph University in Ohio, Gene Kritsky‘s passion has inspired other Americans to document cicadas – half a million videos and photographs have been uploaded to Kritsky's citizen science app Cicada Safari, which he launched in 2019.
Across the US, there are 12 broods of 17-year cicadas, and three broods of 13-year cicadas.
Groups that share the same emergence years are called broods and are labelled by Roman numerals. Broods are complex groups of different species that emerge in different parts of the country at the same time. Exactly why they become synchronised in this way, however, is still the subject of great scientific debate.
“The Northern Illinois Brood has been reported to be a pretty dense brood," says Mike Raupp, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland's entomology department. "And the Great Southern Brood is very widespread and reaches high densities in many locations. So, he adds, in the area of overlap in Illinois, the density of cicadas could be immense.
The next time Broods XIX and XII emerge together it will be 2245. 
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