Brood XIX: Cicada Invasion 2011 is Underway

by NowPublic Staff | May 10, 2011 at 03:38 pm

2309 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

Cicadas Emerging after 13 Years: Say Hello to Brood 19

It's not really a cicada invasion... because they've been here the whole time! After 13 years of dormancy, billions of cicadas are emerging, and making a great deal of noise. Brood XIX is here. Meet the periodic cicadas.

Brood XIX, aka Brood 19, is the largest brood of 13-year cicadas in the US. (Broods are the geographic/chronological groupings of cicadas- the broods never meet each other, and emerge every 13 or 17 years.) The cicadas will continue to emerge throughout May, and then the serious cicada breeding is gonna go down.

The females will lay their eggs in June, and then all those millions of insects will start to die. You'll be cleaning up cicada for ages. We're talking over a million cicadas per square acre in some places. (It's pronounced /suh-KAY-duh/, though some say /suh-KAH-duh/)

The eggs will hatch in July, and the larvae will burrow beneath the earth and wait... for another 13 years.

Brood XIX is making their presence felt in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Cicadas are not poisonous, and they are safe for your pets to eat.

If you're wondering, yes, Rob Zombie did write a song about periodic cicadas. It's called "17-Year Locust".