It’s that time of year — well, that time every 17 years.
Cicadas have begun to emerge from the soil to gear up for mating season. Here’s what people should expect from this emergence.
Brood XIV to be seen in Southern Ohio
It might not be a cicada invasion for the Miami Valley like 2021’s emergence. But Brood XIV is special in its own way.
That’s because these ones emerge on a 17 year cycle. They’re the offspring of the Brood XIV cicadas last observed in the region in 2008.
For that reason, they’re known as periodical cicadas, said Don Cipollini, a Wright State University professor who specializes in plant-insect interactions.
“You can tell they're a periodical cicada because they're very dark black with red eyes. And they're a wide-bodied insect about an inch and a half long, with long clear wings, kind of a blunt end to their body, and they can fly,” Cipollini said.
They will appear in more than a dozen Ohio counties, including Champaign, Greene, Butler, Warren and Hamilton counties, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. They’ll also be in states like Kentucky and Tennessee.
Why are they coming out now? And what to expect.
They come out from the ground when the soil temperature reaches 64 degrees, Cipollini said.
“That temperature is based on the evolutionary history of the insects saying, ‘Well, as long as soils reach this temperature, we're pretty sure we can emerge and not get frozen,’” he said.
The cicadas started to come out earlier this month, Cipollini said.
If you've heard the insect's signature chirping noise, that’s their way of trying to create the next brood that’ll emerge in 2042. The males do it to attract mates, and may even do it in unison to increase their chances.
“Cicadas are what you might call promiscuous in the animal world. They mate multiple times, the whole time they're above ground and start that process,” he said.
The noise can reach 100 decibels — the volume of a jack hammer, Cipollini said.
What people should know about them
Despite their alarming appearance, they’re harmless, said Tom Macy, forest health specialist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources partners with organizations like Ohio State University to monitor cicada populations.
“They’re just really neat insects to learn about, see and observe, and a really amazing natural phenomena that we don't get to see every year,” Macy said.
Cicadas are important to our ecosystem, according to Cipollini. They act as a food source, can serve as fertilizer, and his research even indicates they’re effective at pruning trees.
“There's really no reason to try to get rid of these things or kill them,” Cipollini said.
Though, they can pose a risk to young trees; the females’ egg injection into tree branches might be too much for a smaller tree to handle. Macy recommends placing netting over top of such trees to prevent the females from accessing those branches.
But otherwise, Macy doesn’t see cicadas as a bad thing compared to any real tree pest.
“This is one that, for me, is fun because a lot of the insects and diseases I work with are kind of depressing because they are killing our native trees and having major negative impacts on our forest,” Macy said. “But this is one we can get more excited about and really don't need to worry about.”
The cicadas will reach their peak population above ground in June, Macy said, and they'll likely stick around until early July.
