Brood XIII and brood XIX cicadas will only live above ground for about five weeks in 2024. Here's what you can expect.
It will soon be that time of the year when cicadas emerge from the underground and Kentucky is one of their destinations. But when can people expect them?
This year's group, Brood XIV, will emerge in numbers in the lower billions this spring, said Gene Kritsky, founder of Cicada Safari, a group that studies cicadas and gathers data as community members upload photographs of cicadas to an app.
This year, cicadas from Brood XIV will emerge in 13 states, including Kentucky, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, Kritsky told USA TODAY Tuesday.
What are the cicadas from Brood XIV?
Brood XIV is made up of periodical cicadas that emerge every 17 years, said Kritsky, who is also a professor in the biology department at Mount Saint Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Prior to emerging, they spend years underground feeding on roots, according to Kritsky.
These particular cicadas emerge every 17 years, so the last time they were seen was 2008, he said.
When will Brood XIV cicadas emerge?
Brood XIV will start to emerge in northern Georgia around the middle or end of April in areas where soil temperatures are about 64 degrees Fahrenheit, Kritsky said.
In states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, they'll likely emerge around the second week of May. They'll likely stay until the end of June.
John Cooley is an associate professor in residence in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at the University of Connecticut. He said to find out where cicadas will emerge, he and other researchers look to past records.
The area with the most cicadas this year will likely be Kentucky and Tennessee. There will also be large numbers in Georgia, the Carolinas and Pennsylvania, he said.
More on cicadas and Brood XIV
Cicadas are insects that belong to the hemiptera order, which includes stink bugs, bed bugs, aphids and cicada families, Kritsky said.
The oldest historical record of Brood XIV cicadas is from 1634, when Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony recorded them, said Kritsky. However, Native Americans knew of them for centuries prior to European contact, he wrote on his website.
Periodical cicadas only occur in the eastern half of the U.S., he said.
There are three different species of 17-year periodical cicadas, he added: Magicicada septendecim, magicicada cassini and magicicada septendecula. There are some differences among the three species, such as their calls and colors.
What's the life cycle of a cicada?
Cicadas spend years underground, emerging every 13 or 17 years, and sometimes randomly if they've lost count, Kritsky said on his website.
Only male cicadas sing or make that buzzing noise they're known for. To do so, they use sound-producing structures called tymbals, located on the side of their abdomens, Kritsky wrote on the Cicada Safari website.
"About five days after they start to emerge, you'll start to hear some calls. Every day, more and more are coming out ... It takes them a full six week period for all of them to come out."
They typically make the most noise during the day and their calls or songs are quite loud, Kritsky said, noting that he has measured their calls and recorded them at decibel readings of 102 -- louder than jets flying into an airport.
The males sing three different types of songs, engage in duets with the females and then mate, said Cooley from the University of Connecticut. They try not to mate with different species, he said.
Female cicadas die after mating once. The males mate until they can't anymore, then die off, leaving a lot more males than females, he said.
After mating, female cicadas lay eggs in branches on trees. About 6 to 10 weeks later, the eggs hatch and the young cicadas, measuring about two milliliters, then drop to the ground, according to Kritsky.
The juvenile cicadas quickly get underneath the soil and feed on grass roots.
According to Cooley, by July, community members won't see much evidence that cicadas have been in the area except for the holes in the ground and the eggs up in the trees.
What do cicadas do for the environment?
According to Kritsky, cicadas help the ecology of the eastern U.S. because the tunnels that form when they come out of in the ground make way for natural aeration of soil. The adult cicadas that die after mating also provide food for predators.
Even the eggs of female cicadas help by allowing the natural pruning of trees that can lead to more flowers and fruit the following year, Kritsky said on his website. And after cicadas die and their bodies decay, nitrogen and other nutrients are added to the soil.
Some people even eat cicadas, he said, noting that Native Americans have been known to eat them. He said the insects are best consumed when still white.
"They taste like cold canned asparagus," Kritsky wrote. "Like all insects, cicadas have a good balance of vitamins, are low in fat, and, especially the females, are high in protein."
Clearing up misconceptions about cicadas
Kritsky said there are some factors people should keep in mind when thinking about cicadas.
"One thing is they shouldn't be afraid of them," he said. "They don't spread disease. They don't bite. They don't sting. They're not going to carry away your pets."
Cooley said they are often mistaken for locusts as well.
"The biblically-minded Puritans who came to Massachusetts in the 1600s encountered this brood," Cooley said. "Because they were keyed into Old Testament kind of stuff, they thought that this massive appearance of insects was some sort of biblical plague because somebody had been misbehaving."
Once it happened again 17 years later, they figured the insects emerge on a regular basis, Cooley said.
"They're not a plague," he said. "They're not locusts. None of the above."
He also said the presence of cicadas are an indication that forests are healthy.
"If the cicadas suddenly disappear, that's when I start worrying," he told USA TODAY. "One of the things that we're really going to be keeping an eye on this time around is what the populations on Long Island look like because they've had pretty severe droughts out there."
Cicada populations on Long Island have been declining for at least the past 34 years, he said.
How to log cicada sightings
Kritsky, whose program collects data from the public on cicadas, said those who want to send in photos can download the Cicada Safari app via the Apple store or Google Play.
Calling contributors "Scouts," he said community members have sent over 600,000 photographs of cicadas that have been reviewed and approved.
The program is always looking for contributions, he said.
"If we don't have a lot of crowd support, we don't get our data," Kritsky said.