INSECT ERUPTION
Get ready, Maryland: The 17-year Brood X cicadas are coming in May
Of course, this is the year the cicadas are coming. A pandemic, then an insect eruption. It just makes perfect sense. But scientists are rejoicing over the onceevery-17-years event — the arrival of the region’s largest brood of cicadas.
The winged singers, part of a group called Brood X or Brood Ten, will be hard to miss. Trees, fence posts, signs and cars will all host plenty of cicadas, whose calls can approach 100 decibels — the intensity of a lawn mower.
“This is like having a National Geographic special in your backyard,” said Mike Raupp, an entomology professor at the University of Maryland.
Millions of cicadas are likely to rise from the ground around mid- to late May and stick around for two to four weeks. During that time, they’ll breed and leave behind the next generation, which will surface en masse in 2038.
In addition to Maryland, a center for the emergence, the cicadas are expected to emerge in Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, Raupp said.
At the beginning, cicada nymphs will dig to the surface, leaving behind small pockmarks in the grass. Then, the fascinating creatures will settle on perches of all kinds to do their final molt, leaving behind their adolescent shells.
Particularly at dawn and dusk, observers in much of Maryland — generally with the exception of the Eastern Shore — will hear male cicadas singing from the trees to attract their mates. Afterward, females will lay eggs on the pencil-sized twigs of trees and bushes, before the 17-year cicadas die off.
It’s a Romeo and Juliet-esque teenage love story, Raupp says.
“These things have been living a dismal life, if you can imagine sucking on the roots of plants for 17
years,” Raupp said. “And then you get up and out. You’re 17 years old, it’s your day in the sunshine ... You’re gonna sing your hearts out, court, mate, they’re gonna lay eggs and then everybody’s gonna die and that’s the end.”
In 2004, the last time Brood X made its appearance, cicadas started to emerge in the area May 11, according to The Baltimore Sun’s archives. They rise once the soil 8 inches deep reaches 64 degrees, experts say, and are often triggered by a warm rain.
By early June 2004, the Sun reported that their “love-chorus,” a “shrill rasping like a million angry rattlesnakes,” was waning.
Their progeny will emerge into a wholly changed world. Four presidential terms, 20 iPhone models and heaping handfuls of history have passed while the fledgling cicadas grew underground, feeding on nutrients in tree roots.
This time, complaints (or exultations) about their piercing cries will pepper Twitter and Facebook, and scientists will track them perhaps with more accuracy than ever before.
“Rather than have a handful of people like myself running around and trying to collect data from Georgia to New York, now we can enlist thousands of citizen scientists to generate the large data set,” Raupp said.
That will be especially important as scientists try to gauge the impact of climate change and land development on the unique insects, Raupp said.
In 2017, early-rising cicadas in the Baltimore area drew concern, as scientists wondered whether rising temperatures could be confounding the creatures’ biological clocks.
Scientists will use smartphone apps like “Cicada Safari,” created by researchers at the Mount
St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, to collect cicada reports from the public, he said, and learn more about the places they emerge and collect.
If there’s a bright spot to be found amid the pandemic-cicada combo, it’s that the pests aren’t harmful to humans, said Emily Zobel, an agriculture faculty extension assistant at the University of Maryland. They don’t swarm and they don’t bite, although the shells they leave behind are a frequent source of consternation.
“If you’re handling them, their feet might get stuck on you and stuff, but they’re not going to cause any harm,” Zobel said. “They are not gonna harm your pets either.”
They’re not exactly good for cats and dogs, though, Zobel said.
“I had a dog last time and she used to go out and scarf them down,” Zobel said. “My mom used to go out and run after her and be like: ‘Spit that out,’ because they’re not necessarily the best thing for your pet. But if your pet happens to scarf one or two down, it’s not the end of the world.”
Marylanders may also want to cover younger trees and other vulnerable plants with thin branches with protective netting so that females don’t cover them with eggs, Zobel said.
The eggs can cut off plants’ circulatory systems, causing a phenomena called flagging, during which branches wilt or die.
Nets with one centimeter gaps are preferable, so that pollinators will be able to get through and large female cicadas will not. Scientists also warn against using pesticides to clear cicadas, given that it could harm other insects and isn’t likely to deter cicadas for very long anyway.
In any pre-pandemic year, the cicadas’ arrival would have been a nightmare for event planners at Towson-based Lemon & Lime. Brides and grooms who unwittingly planned for wedding ceremonies in May and June might panic upon realizing that crunchy cicada shells could be a prominent decoration, and the bugs’ noisy whizzing the event’s soundtrack.
But these days, all that couples can focus on is pandemic safety measures, and the uncertainty that shrouds events in the time of COVID-19.
“If these bugs would have woken up in 2019, it would have been crisis lockdown mode for sure. Now it’s like: Well hopefully we can actually have this wedding. Everything else will work itself out,” said Katey Clark, co-founder of Lemon & Lime Event Design.
Restaurants, golf courses and orchards alike — banking on a resurgence of customers as COVID-19 vaccines reach more arms and temperatures warm — are hopeful that Marylanders will still meet and dine outdoors.
For Raupp and his team of researchers, the bugs’ arrival is a renaissance, and promises interest in everything from their online cicada cookbook (apparently they taste kind of like shrimp) to their festive cicada T-shirts.
For the Carrie Murray Nature Center in Northwest Baltimore’s Gwynns Falls Leakin Park, the cicadas will offer a unique opportunity to engage children with natural wonders.
The exoskeletons the bugs leave sticking to trees may feature prominently in lessons — and natural arts and crafts, said Sarah Lank, a naturalist at the center and head of animal care.
“They’re like part of our scavenger hunts and things like that, so the kids usually take to them really well in normal years,” Lank said. “So, I’m also excited to see how the kids interact and engage with them when it’s a huge abundance out there.”