Cicada-mania

[Dr. Bob]

Just thought I\'d post a picture of a Brood X cicada. We\'ve got billions of them in the Maryland area right now. Once they\'re gone though, we won\'t see them for another 17 years.

 

[Calavera]

Yuck..

How big is that thing ?

 

[Klute]

72mm scale.

 

[wiccanpony]

one of natures wonders

WoW!! what a Fascinating creature! and Mother Nature is a knockout of a painter..the colors are glorious

 

[Klute]

The light sourcing on that second wing segment and do you think the body is wet blended or layered.Could be airbrush.???

 

[supervike]

Full size..

I think that thing is cute as a bug....

whatever the hell that supposed to mean..

 

[Sand Rat]

Ok, heres the thing I dont get. You easterners get all excited about the damn cicadias when they only come out once every 17 years or so. We get the things every year. Why the big deal?

 

[supervike]

Speaking of strange bugs....

Last year, during a particularly hot streak in the Summer, at about twilight we had what I thought was a hummingbird in our flower bed.

I ran up and grabbed the camera, because normally hummingbirds are pretty shy, but this little fella let you come right up to it.

After taking several pretty good shots (considering it was almost dark, and the thing moved at very fast speeds) I downloaded them onto the computer.

Something seemed very odd to me about it, and as I looked closer at the pictures, I saw that it was no humingbird at all, but some sort of other creature.

A quick search on the internet revealed that it was a Hummingbird Moth, which I guess are apparently very rare.

 

[Duende]

Nifty!

That\'s a cool looking moth! Have you tried contacting any zoological society or even the science department of a local university in your area? They probably like to know about any rare creatures in the vicinity and be very pleased to see your shots.

And are you gonna try that wing pattern on any future minis??

 

[Helga]

good grief

that\'s a horrible looking moth.
Look at that red glowing eyes!

I learnt that eyes caught right on in a photo flashlight show the blood vessels behind the iris. Everybody knows that albino-rabbit-eyes effect You get with flashlight family photoes.

But you have to have red blood to get that effect... and insects don\'t have red blood... normally...so what did this thing do? Suck somebody dry?

 

[supervike]

even cooler...

This nasty little guy has a \"probing\" type tongue that sticks out a full two inches from his body. You can sort of see it in this shot. It is actually reaching all the way to the flower. I have other shots, i\'ll try to post some showing the backside of its wings....

I found a website that had a little forum about people who have seen these little guys. Mostly in the UK.

Thats a good idea about contacting our local university. I am sure it may be interesting to see what they would say about it.

 

[Dr. Bob]

Originally posted by Calavera
Yuck..

How big is that thing ?

Maybe 3 or 4 cm (not counting the wings).

I hear that they taste great!

 

[Dr. Bob]

Originally posted by steelcult
Ok, heres the thing I dont get. You easterners get all excited about the damn cicadias when they only come out once every 17 years or so. We get the things every year. Why the big deal?

We get cicadas every year too, but there are lots of different broods of cicadas. You can hear \"regular\" cicadas every summer, but you don\'t see most of them because they hide or fly pretty fast or have other defense mechanisms.

Brood X has a different strategy: they come out all at once only once every 17 years, thus they overwhelm any predators that might eat them. They are big, slow, and bumbling, but there are so many of them that you can\'t get them all.

We\'re talking like a million emerging per acre in some spots. They cover trees and block the sky and leave their carcasses all over everything.

It\'s pretty amazing. I was in high school last time they came out. I\'ll be over 50 next time I see them.


There are 13 year cicadas too. There\'s a whole interesting explanation about why the cicadas end up using larger prime numbers for their cycles.

 

[Baltius]

Supervike, maybe hummingbird moths are rare in Iowa, but we see them quite often here in the mountains of Colorado. They are very cool looking bugs. Your picture is very good and clear especially considering the speed at which they flap their wings. We are often almost attacked by swarms of Hummingbirds here as well. They love their sugar water.

 

[vincegamer]

The Noise

Plus, the 17 year cicada sings a song at around 85 decibels. That\'s as loud as a truck.
With billions, they drown out the highway traffic noise.

 

[No Such Agency]

Cicadas with 13- and 17-year life cycles emerge less often with other broods than do the ones whose cycles are non-prime numbers. For example, when a brood with a 14-year life cycle emerges, it will share the summer with two-year and seven-year broods, with which it will interbreed and produce mongrel offspring. A 16-year brood will share a mating season with two-, four- and eight-year broods, and an even more diverse group of hybrids will result.

In contrast, when 13- and 17-year broods are out, they share the season only with broods having short life cycles (such as one, two or three years) -- and life cycles that short presumably couldn\'t survive the Pleistocene climate. The net result was that 13- or 17-year cicadas didn\'t have their genes \"diluted\" by hybridization -- except every 221 years, when they were out together in the few places where they shared the same turf.

Of course, periodical species didn\'t pick 13 and 17 as their magic numbers. As with all evolutionary processes, choice played no part.

What happened, instead, was that broods of other cycle lengths simply became extinct. They emerged in a cold summer and failed to reproduce, or they emerged in insufficient numbers and were eliminated by predators. What remained were the broods mathematically most likely to make it across the Pleistocene minefield -- 13 and 17. Furthermore, in those populations synchronicity was essential. Individuals whose timing was off just a little -- ones that emerged a year early or late -- were extirpated. But their brethren whose genes endowed them with perfect timing generation after generation, survived.

From this Washington Post article. So basically, longer life cycles in prime-numbers of years\' length are an evolutionary response to 1) climactic instability in the past, and 2) the need to appear in large numbers all at once to overwhelm predators. Also, presumably, life cycles longer than 17 years simply have lower population growth and don\'t do as well, and thus tend to disappear over evolutionary time. Good article

Addendum:
This Nature article points out that predators can also have multi-year cycles, and that prime-number cicadas would coincide less with those - presumably causing the predators to evolve away from relying on cicadas as a consistent food source.

 

[Dragonsreach]

@Supervike:
My wife (Fran) saw one of those Hummingbird Moths last September in the NorthWest of England.
She did a search and It is a Hummingbird moth part of the Hawkshead family of moths.
They are apparently quite rare in Europe, so seeing one in the Rainy Cold of the UK was quite an exception.

I didn\'t get to see it and Fran couldn\'t get to the camera. But she\'ll be keeping her eyes open again for one this year.

 

[Gypsy]

Oh that moth is such a cute little bugger, I want one just for my own!
Instead I\'m stuck with the most ugliest spider I\'ve ever had. It lives in my bedroom, has a fat bald butt and tiny short legs and it\'s name is Atze. We have kind of a love/hate relationship.

 

[wiccanpony]

for shame..you made me go look up recipes

Originally posted by Dr. Bob

Originally posted by Calavera
Yuck..

How big is that thing ?

Maybe 3 or 4 cm (not counting the wings).

I hear that they taste great!

I just had to do a Google search....:|~
El Chirper Tacos

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter or peanut oil

1/2 pound newly emerged cicadas

2 serrano chilies, raw, finely chopped

1 tomato, finely chopped

1 onion, finely chopped

1/2 tsp ground pepper or to taste

1/2 tsp cumin

3 tsp taco seasoning mix

1 handful cilantro, chopped

Taco shells, to serve

Sour cream

Shredded cheddar cheese

Shredded lettuce

Directions

1. Heat the butter or oil in a frying pan and fry the cicadas for 10 minuts, or until cooked through.

2. Remove from pan and roughly chop into 1/4-inch cubes/ Place back in pan.

3. Add the chopped onions, chilies and tomato, season with salt, and fry for another 5 minutes on medium-low heat.

4. Sprinkle with ground pepper, cumin and oregano to taste.

5. Serve in taco shells and garnish with cilantro, sour cream, lettuce and cheddar cheese.

 

[supervike]

sounds familiar...

I have had something very close to that at our local fast food Taco place.

I think the bug part was unintentional here, though.....lollollollol