Dr. Chris Simon: Cicadas
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This spring, two large broods of periodical cicadas—one in the Midwest that emerges every 13 years and one in the Southeast that emerges every 17 years—will come out at the same time.
On Thursday, April 4, 2024, SciLine interviewed:
Dr. Chris Simon is a senior research scientist in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut. See the footage and transcript from the interview below, or select ‘Contents’ on the left to skip to specific questions.
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Introduction
[0:00:19]
CHRIS SIMON: Hi, my name is Chris Simon. I’m a senior research professor at the University of Connecticut Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I study how species formed, how they move across the landscape, spread across the world, and what happens when they come back together again and interact. And our research organism are periodical cicadas and well other cicadas all cicadas worldwide.
Interview with SciLine
Why do periodical cicadas synchronize their emergence as part of a brood?
[0:00:55]
CHRIS SIMON: When you have a lot of individuals all coming out together at the same time, they get protection from safety in numbers. And so periodical cicadas are not the only thing that does that—there’s various plants and other animals that do this to try to swamp predators.
How many cicadas from Broods XIII and XIX will emerge this year?
[0:01:23]
CHRIS SIMON: There’s going to be many trillions worth of cicadas. And in any particular area, you could have as many as a million and a half per acre. That’s the largest number that’s been counted. But it’s quite difficult to count these things when there’s a lot of them. So, it’ll be huge numbers.
Will any cicadas from Broods XIII and XIX emerge int he same place this year?
[0:01:50]
CHRIS SIMON: As far as we know, they do not overlap—they come close in some places, and in other places, they’re not even close. But the real problem is you can’t tell them apart. In the areas where they’re close to each other they’re identical in song and in appearance, and you can’t tell apart brood 19 from brood 13. And so we only know that they don’t overlap because we have mapped them in other years and other generations, where they came out by themselves. And so, we have very detailed maps, which people can see by looking on cicadas.uconn.edu, which is run by my colleague, John Cooley, at the University of Connecticut. And you can see exactly where they come out what years they’ve come out in the past. And you can zoom in to all of the locations where they’re close to each other.
What are some ways citizens can follow and even participate in cicada research?
[0:03:02]
CHRIS SIMON: Cicada Safari is run by my colleague, Gene Kritsky, and he developed this app for a cell phone. You can download the app to your cell phone for free. And then all you have to do is take photographs of the cicadas, or you can record their song, and then those are automatically sent to his university, University of Mount St. Joseph. And then they’re verified by cicada experts. And once they’re verified, then they’re put on his map, and they’re also sent to UConn for our information as well. And so that’s a great way to follow the emergence. People can also follow expert mappers as they go around, verifying the edges of the brood that’s on cicadas@uconn.edu. And then there’s a conversation among cicada enthusiasts that takes place on a website called cicadamania.com. And cicada mania is a great place to go to find out about cicadas all over the world, because I didn’t mention before, but there’s more than 3000 species of cicadas worldwide.
What role do periodical cicadas play in ecosystems?
[0:04:22]
CHRIS SIMON: Periodical cicadas are very important in ecosystems when they’re underground going through their different underground stages. They’re food for various kinds of soil invertebrates that are the basis of a lot of food chains. And so, when they’re really tiny, they’re good food for ants. And as they get larger and larger, they are food for underground mammals like moles and shrews. And then, when they come out of the ground, they are food, of course, for everything above ground, like small mammals, birds, turtles, snakes, and humans. So, Native North Americans used to collect them and preserve them as a big food source. And they knew when they were coming out.
Do cicadas face any threats?
[0:05:23]
CHRIS SIMON: One of the biggest threats to periodical cicadas is humans. We convert the landscape, we remove their trees, we pave over their burrows underground. And because of that, there’s a lot fewer areas where periodical cicadas come out now than in the past. And, for example, if you think of in the 1800s, if you think of New England in the 1800s, the forests were almost entirely removed, with only three rows in between fields and maybe along streams there will be trees left or up in mountains. And so, the cicadas would be wiped out wherever the trees are removed, especially when they’re completely removed for agriculture. The only cicadas left are along these small tree rows, as a result of that, the northeastern broods are really dramatically decreasing in the extent of the populations of periodical cicadas. So, humans are really the biggest problem with the cicadas.
How is climate change affecting the timing of periodical cicadas?
[0:06:43]
CHRIS SIMON: Climate change is causing the growing seasons to become longer. And when you have growing seasons that are longer, organisms that are feeding during that time have a longer period of time to feed. And the periodical cicadas, that means that they have a longer growing season every single year as the climate warms, and if the growing season is longer, they can reach maturity faster. And so they have these four year windows during which they can come out once they’ve reached the last stage and become mature. If they’re ready and it’s not their time. It’s not the predicted time, and it’s four years early—they will come out. They won’t come out five years early or three years early, except a few stragglers maybe are two years early or one year early. They mainly come out four years early because of their safety in numbers strategy for survival.
Does anyone need to take precautions to protect themselves or their property from cicadas?
[0:07:50]
CHRIS SIMON: Cicadas are completely harmless to humans. They don’t bite or sting. They’re very friendly. They’re slow moving. You can run almost as fast as the cicadas—at least I can run as fast as the cicada can fly. And then, the only thing that they might damage is small trees. So, if you’re in an area with huge numbers of cicadas, they can lay so many eggs in small trees that they’ll kill the tree. But if the tree is small enough to put netting over, then that will protect the tree from having cicadas lay eggs in the branches. And the netting is usually available at your favorite local big box store. They sell it as cicada netting in areas that have a lot of cicadas.
What advice do you have for reporters covering cicadas?
[Posted April 4, 2024 | Download video]
Dr. Chris Simon's Magicicada media faux pas document
Linguistic advice for journalists
