The last time Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia experienced the 17-year cicada swarms was in 1999, writes Cleveland.com. And while many people liken them to the biblical swarms of locusts that hit Egypt, locusts belong to Orthoptera and are a type of grasshopper.
Cicadas are flying, plant-sucking members of the taxonomic order Hemiptera, and the genus Magicicada. There are seven species, four with 13-year life cycles and three with 17-year life cycles. Other close relatives of cicadas include leafhoppers, treehoppers, and fulgoroids, or planthoppers.
The 17-year cicada is also known as a “periodic” cicada species which occur only in Eastern North America, and what makes them unique is their developmental synchronization, causing them to appear in great swarms every 13 to 17 years. This unusual behavior is not seen outside North America.
Next month, when the nighttime soil temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit for four consecutive days, as many as 1.5 million adult cicada nymphs will emerge per acre all over the Northeastern part of the country. When the adults emerge, they will take to the air, desperately seeking mates to complete their life cycle.
The screeching and singing of the males starts with the sun in the morning and carries on until late at night, becoming a deafening roar, akin to a chorus of chain saws. For the next four to six weeks of their lives, the cicadas will think of nothing else but procreation, mating and laying eggs, much like salmon during the annual salmon runs. And like the salmon, the cicadas don’t even stop to eat.
Speaking of noise, if you are wondering just how loud a swarm of cicadas might sound, the Washington Post cites David Snyder who actually experienced a swarm and in 2004 wrote: “Words seem inadequate to describe that vaguely menacing hum-whistle that seems to be everywhere but emanates from no single place in particular.”
After mating takes place, the female will lay her eggs in small slits she cuts with her ovipositor on small live twigs. She can lay up to 400 eggs in 40 to 50 locations. It usually takes about six weeks for the eggs to hatch and the nymphs to emerge. They fall to the ground and burrow into the soil anywhere from six to 18 inches, and there they feed on the juices of plant roots for the next 13 to 17 years. And then the cycle starts all over again.
