May 4, 2008 - Cicadas

Welcome to the Nature Notebook.

Our region of Pennsylvania is about to experience an event that hasn’t happened for almost two decades — the return of periodical cicadas. Slowly and silently these heavy-bodied insects move upward through the soil, emerging around the bases of trees over the course of a few nights. These cicada nymphs split their hard outer shells and emerge as winged adults. Often called 17-year locusts, these insects are not related to grasshoppers. The mating calls of these insects can be almost deafening as they court and mate. Emerging cicadas provide a feast for many of our native birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. Within a month of emerging, the survivors mate, deposit their eggs and die. We won’t see the next wave of periodical cicadas until 2025.

This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.