Insects and Climate Change (1)
You’ve been for a year now, Kyohei. What’s been your most memorable experience?
That’s easy-my encounter with a horde of tiny black-and-red monsters.
I’m sorry, I need more information.
Just kidding. Well, sort of kidding-I’m talking about the mass emergence of periodical cicadas. I even went to Washington, D.C. one weekend in May to join a friend of mine who’s working as an entomologist at a university lab there. I was really excited to see this amazing natural phenomenon close up.
I hope you brought some earplugs.
The cicada symphony may have been extremely irritating for some people. But in Kyohei’s case, I’m guessing it was music to his ears.
Bug enthusiasts like me were delighted to witness Brood X, or 17-year cicadas. It was the biggest emergence event since 2004. It involved several trillion cicadas across 16 states. There was a lot of noise-and a lot of wonder. The time these insects spend above ground is short, though-just three to six weeks. During that brief window, scientists collected as much data as they could about the cicadas’ existence and behavior.
Why do these noisy bugs come out in such great numbers? And how do they know that 17 years have passed and it’s time to pop up to the surface?
