Enjoy the interesting sounds and wonder at this magical insect that patiently lives underground waiting for its brief moment in the sun. So, at this time of year at the summer solstice, enjoy the cicada season. The Periodical genus is greener to yellow. The Okanagana genus common in Utah has species with red to the orange coloration on their backs. Females have a solid like ovipositor at the tip of their abdomen to cut through slits into the new shoots on trees and shrubs, where she inserts her eggs.Īfter hatching, young nymphs fall to the ground and burrow into the soil to find tender routes for feeding. After spending one to several years as a soft-bodied nymph, mating and egg-laying take place in a few weeks to a month. Each 17-year species has a sibling species with. Once they reach maturity, the nymphs emerge from the ground and. The nymphs spend the next several years underground, feeding on the sap of tree roots. After a few weeks, the eggs hatch into tiny nymphs, which then drop to the ground and burrow into the soil. The lifespan of the adult is relatively brief. The genus Magicicada contains six species, three with a 17-year life-cycle and three with a 13-year life-cycle. The cicada life cycle starts with eggs that are laid on trees by the female cicada. Adult male cicadas make a characteristic buzzing sound as they sit in the canopies of trees and shrubs calling females to them for mating. In some years, we observe a large emergence of adults, such as happening this early summer in northern Utah. Utah has numerous species of cicadas, but they are all annual in their lifecycle. They have piercing-sucking mouthparts that feed on the sap of the roots of woody plants such as trees and shrubs. The subterranean nymph excavates a chamber beside the root of a woody plant, into which the cicada inserts its beak and feeds on sap.Cicadas are medium-sized insects with large compound eyes and large membranous wings. Soon after hatching, the small nymphs drop to the ground and burrow in, ready for a relatively long life of 17 years. The incisions severely injure the affected twigs, which generally die from the point of the incision to the tip. The females have a strong, chisel-like ovipositor, which is used to make incisions in small branches and twigs, into which her eggs are deposited. The adult periodic cicada is black or dark brown, with large, membranous wings folded over its back, and large, red eyes. During years when periodical cicadas are abundant, the strange-looking, cast exoskeletons of their mature nymphs can be found in all manner of places. The stout-bodied nymphs emerge from the ground and then climb up upon some elevated object, where they metamorphose into the adult form, which lives for about one month. During years of irruption or peak emergence, the ground in late spring and early summer can be abundantly pock-marked with the emergence holes of the mature nymphs of this species, at a density greater than one thousand per square meter. The periodical cicada spends most of its life in the ground, in its developmental nymph stages. Southern populations of the periodical cicada gave generation times as short as 13 years, and are usually treated as a different species. The irruptive adult phase occurs at intervals as long as 17 years, in the case of northern populations of the periodical cicada ( Magicicada septendecum), which has the longest generation time of any plant-sucking insect. Of adults and their noisy summer renditions, interspersed with much longer periods during which the adult animals are not found in the region. The National Audubon Society Collection/Photo Researchers, Inc. Other species of cicadas have non-overlapping generations, so there are periodic events of the great abundanceĪn adult periodical cicada.
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