Just as an unexpected free dinner will distract you from the leftovers in your refrigerator, the appearance of this summer’s cicadas will draw predators away from their usual prey. During the emergence of Brood The birds pounced on the cicadas., caterpillar populations skyrocketed. Saved from the birds, the caterpillars chewed twice as many oak leaves as normal, and the chain of effects went on and on. It is impossible for scientists to study them all. “The ecosystem gets a quick boost, with this unexpected disturbance changing a lot of things at once,” says Louie Yang, an ecologist and professor of entomology at UC Davis.
From birth to death, these insects shape the forest around them. As temperatures rise in late April, pale and red-eyed cicada nymphs begin making pinky-sized holes in the ground, preparing for their grand entrance in May. All these tunnels make it easier so that rainwater moves through the soil, where it can then be used by plants and other soil-dwelling microbes. Once they are fully grown and on the surface, adult cicadas shed their exoskeletons, spread their wings, and fly away to spend their remaining four to six weeks on Earth singing (if they are males) and listening to the most popular songs. sexy (if they are female). and mating.
Mother cicadas use the metal enhanced saws built into their abdomens (wooden drill shafts coated with elements such as aluminum, copper and iron) to cut pockets in tree branches, where they will lay approximately 500 eggs each. Sometimes all this cutting causes the twigs to wilt or break, killing the leaves. While this could permanently damage a very young sapling, mature trees simply get rid of the cut branches and move on. “It’s like natural pruning,” says Kritsky, which keeps trees strong, prevents disease and promotes flower growth.
Once the mating season ends, so does the life of the cicada. “By the end of summer, everyone forgets about cicadas,” Lill says. “Everybody dies. They all rot in the ground. And then they leave.” By the end of June, there will be millions of pounds of cicadas piled at the base of the trees, decomposing. The smell, Kritsky says, “is a sensitive memory you’ll never forget, like rancid Limburger cheese.”
But these stinking corpses send a huge amount of food to the scavengers on the ground. “Cicacadas serve as nutrient reservoirs,” says Yang. “When they come out, they release all this energy stored in the ecosystem,” returning their bodies to the plants that raised them. In the short term, dead cicadas have a fertilizing effect, feeding microbes on the ground and helping plants grow larger. And as their remains reach forest ponds and streams, the cicadas’ nutrients are transported downstream, where they can strengthen aquatic ecosystems far beyond its tree of origin.
They may smell like spoiled hamburgers, but Yang says if you’re lucky enough to host a tree full of cicadas this year, it’s best to leave their bodies alone to decompose naturally. “They will soon disappear,” she says. If the crash is especially annoying, simply move them out of the way and let nature do the rest.
The thought of billions of squeaky bugs in your backyard may give you goosebumps, but you don’t need to be a passive observer when they arrive. Researchers are clamoring for citizen scientists to submit photos of their local cicadas to help map the current emergence. He Cicada Safari The app, developed by Kritsky, received and verified 561,000 cicada photos during the Brood X emergence in 2021; expect to get even more this time.
“This is an amazing natural phenomenon to wonder about,” says Lill, “not something to be afraid of.”