Sound The Trumpet : 17 - Year Cicadas to Swarm from Georgia to New York

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“17 - Year Cicadas to Swarm from Georgia to New York”
by VOA
May 26th, 2013

A 13-year cicada is shown in this picture taken in Lexington, Georgia, USA, May 9, 2011.

HAMDEN, CONNECTICUT — Colossal numbers of cicadas, unhurriedly growing underground since 1996, are about to emerge along much of the U.S. East Coast to begin passionately singing and mating as their remarkable life cycle restarts.

This year heralds the springtime emergence of billions of so-called 17-year periodical cicadas, with their distinctive black bodies, buggy red eyes, and orange-veined wings, along a roughly 900-mile stretch from northern Georgia to upstate New York.

The eerie, cacophonous mating music they produce, along with the unusual synchronous mass emergence and lengthy development cycles, have amazed scientists and lay people alike for centuries.

In central Connecticut, particularly dense concentrations of so-called Brood II cicadas, named Magicicada septendecim, should arrive in late May or June, says Chris Maier, entomologist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven.

This will be Maier's third time studying their emergence - he tracked them in 1979 and again in 1996. He said they are next due in 2030, when he will be 81 years old.

Maier said the first scientific recording of Brood II specimens was in 1843.

The precisely-timed arrival of the 1.5-inch (38-mm) plant-sucking, flying adults takes place after a lengthy period of development underground as juveniles.

After maturing, males begin what cicadas may be best known for: their conspicuous acoustic signals, or "songs," to sexually attract females.

"When there's a lot of them together, it's like this hovering noise. It sounds exactly like flying saucers from a 1950s movie," Chris Simon, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, said on Thursday.

Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13