#cicada swarm 2024

[blumin-onion]

Daily Doodle Day 305

<- Day 304 | All Days | Day 306 ->

You will hold on tight to this relic of me, but look inside, I am long gone, and no more, and all that is left of me crumbles into dust in your hand.

[ricofurlow]

Ninjask Everywhere!

[bigpyrolizard]

Made a little drawing for the 13 and 17 year cicada swarm in Illinois. Can't wait to see all the buggers!!!

I wish they made a cicada emoji

[bogleech]

New October 2024 grab bag: Choose any two enamel pins from the lists, get an extra two random ones (sometimes a third), plus all these things:

-KAIJU BRAIN SOAP: fungus scented brain shaped soap containing a miniature rubber Ultraman kaiju they no longer make or sell anywhere!

TARDIGRADE SLIME: improved formula, stretchier, greener, now with a "wet and rotting forest floor" scent I concocted from an artificial "rainforest" fragrance oil and artificial "wood fungus" fragrance oil. Plus it includes a mini plastic tardigrade obviously.

Maggot Putty with eyeballs, stretchy gel putty with so many rubber maggots it's like a moldable maggot swarm

MISCELLANEOUS CARDS & STICKERS: sci fi stuff, monster stuff and bugs

RUBBER BUGS AND CREATURES (YOU GET MORE THAN IN THIS PHOTO) : a sizable handful that will always include an adorable little bat, at least one cicada, roaches, crickets, and some glow in the dark stuff

TWO TINY RESIN BLOBFISH

EXCLUSIVE bootleg stickers I made just for this grab bag so far: APPLA from Neclos Fortress and the Beelzebub fly from Castlevania!

There are some additional things that come in each box too! Just the two pins you get to choose would normally be a $25-30 value!

[petnews2day]

Latest lifestyle News, Live Updates Today June 15, 2024: Bug tourism in USA: ‘Biblical’ cicada swarms draw tourists to nature lover's dream in heart of America

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/UE5Nw

Latest lifestyle News, Live Updates Today June 15, 2024: Bug tourism in USA: ‘Biblical’ cicada swarms draw tourists to nature lover's dream in heart of America

Festivals News LIVE: Happy Father’s Day 2024: Wishes, images, quotes, SMS, greetings, WhatsApp and Facebook status to share with your dad Happy Father’s Day 2024: Father’s Day is on June 16. Celebrate the day with these wishes, images, quotes, SMS, WhatsApp and Facebook status, and more. Read the full story here

See full article at https://petn.ws/UE5Nw #OtherNews

[lastchancevillagegreen]

Chicago Weekend 23 May-26 May 2024:

Only Time Can Tell The Ferocious Few (Granny Records ASBL) (released in 2022)

This is the second item I bought from busker Francisco Joaquín Fernández in Chicago at the Begyle/ Dovetail Brewfest which I mentioned here.

This is a ten inch EP. This time around the band is comprised of Fernández and Tom Gatti with drummer Yves Ditsch on Side 2. Tom Gatti is a guitar playing producer who obviously produced this album.

Above you see the front and the back of the album. Below you can see the two shots of the white vinyl.

The next two shots are both sides of the record label.

Special Cicada Edition!!

While shooting these photos outside I was visited by a friendly cicada. He checked out this album.

Believe me, the cicadas are everywhere in my backyard (and the neighborhood). And while we have hundreds of them, my friends who have a farm have thousands of them. I wish I had their photo of their tree for you cannot even see the bark it is so swarmed with cicadas. Cicadamania!

[mediamonarchy]

https://mediamonarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/20240509_MorningMonarchy.mp3 Download MP3 Death calculator, big black songs about sucking and porky’s revenge + this day in history w/Exercise Winchester Accord and our song of the day by Mark Will on your #MorningMonarchy for May 9, 2024. Notes/Links: Wild orangutan seen healing his wound with a plant https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68942123 ‘Nourishment: What Animals Can Teach Us about Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom’ https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/nourishment-what-animals-can-teach-us-about-rediscovering-our-nutritional-wisdom_fred-provenza/28308004/ Zoogoers outraged to discover ‘panda’ exhibit was actually dogs dyed black and white https://nypost.com/2024/05/06/lifestyle/zoogoers-outraged-to-discover-panda-exhibit-was-actually-dogs-dyed-black-and-white/ Utah couple accidentally ships pet cat to Riverside-based Amazon facility; An Amazon worker in Riverside found the cat and took her under her care until the family could be reunited. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/utah-couple-accidentally-ships-pet-cat-to-riverside-based-amazon-facility/3399198/ City of Wichita considering making microchipping your dog and cat mandatory https://www.kake.com/story/50739797/city-of-wichita-looking-at-recommendation-to-make-microchipping-your-dog-and-cat-mandatory Man allegedly pours bleach into Oregon hatchery tank and kills 18,000 salmon; Joshua Alexander Heckathorn, 20, arrested and booked into jail for second-degree burglary, criminal trespass and criminal mischief https://archive.is/PXwDc Hundreds of thousands of fish die off in Vietnam as heatwave roasts https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/02/climate/mass-fish-die-off-vietnam-intl-scli/index.html Dead Florida dolphin was infected with highly pathogenic bird flu https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/dead-florida-dolphin-was-infected-with-highly-pathogenic-bird-flu/ Walrus dies from bird flu on Arctic island: Researcher https://phys.org/news/2024-04-walrus-dies-bird-flu-arctic.html Scientists raise alarm over common yet ‘deeply concerning’ veterinary advice for pet owners: ‘Vets should stop’; “If it’s on our hands, then these neurotoxins will be all over our homes.” https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/toxic-flea-treatments-chemicals-dogs-water/ Vets urged to cut pesticide flea treatments amid river pollution fears https://archive.is/LLZQo The insect farmers turning to AI to help lower costs https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68880241 Cicadas Are Basically Safe for You — And Your Dog — to Eat https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cicadas-are-basically-safe-for-you-and-your-dog-to-eat-heres-what-to-know/ A little girl said monsters were in her bedroom. It was 60,000 bees; Saylor Class had complained of “monsters in the wall” of her room at their farmhouse in Charlotte, North Carolina. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68924955 Bee swarm delays MLB game nearly 2 hours https://www.nxsttv.com/nmw/news/bee-swarm-delays-mlb-game-nearly-2-hours/ Video: Beekeeper becomes hero after Dodgers-Diamondbacks game delayed due to massive bee colony (Audio) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si6yEuvoaa8 First Cases of HIV Transmitted Through Cosmetic Needles Identified: CDC; Patients received facials at a spa https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/first-cases-of-hiv-transmitted-through-cosmetic-needles-identified-cdc-5639780 Transmetropolitan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmetropolitan King Charles’ funeral plans reportedly being updated regularly after cancer diagnosis: ‘He is really very unwell’ https://nypost.com/2024/04/25/world-news/king-charles-funeral-plans-updated-amid-cancer-battle-report/ ‘AI death calculator’ creators issue urgent warning about frighteningly accurate tool https://nypost.com/2024/04/29/tech/why-you-shouldnt-use-the-scarily-accurate-ai-death-calculator/ Video: New warning issued for scarily accurate AI death clock (Audio) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lUt0HW15lY Fact check: A vaccine did not turn characters in the movie ...

[littleharpethcrossfit]

Sunday, 5 May, 2024

Warm, humid, with a 15% chance of showers that didn't materialize. So it was warm and humid with Cicada's buzzing around.

Warmup #1

Armando led us in a great mobility/flexibility session for the second class.

Warmup #2

4 Rounds

25 Partner Med-Ball Sit-Ups

10 Supermans

Strength

Deadlifts..........1 Rep X 7..........Build to 1 Rep Max

Superset Ring Rows.........5 Reps After Each (7)

Shane=395 Ed=375 Robert/Bernie/Armando=365 Larry=315 Tim=305 Dana*/Dyer*=300 Herb=275 Coach=185 Sue*=175 Cheri=165 Shannon*=145 Linda=110 Britt=95 Jan=32 Warren A/Alicia=did something

This means they did a Personal Best. Musta been the Cicada's.

WOD

10 Rounds For Time

3 Deadlifts.....(225/185/125)

6 Perfect Hand's Release Push-Ups

9 Perfect Below Parallel Air-Squats

Run Arboretum Loop (1.1 Mile) or

Row-Ski 2200 / or Bike 4400m

At Any Time ON THE CLOCK

Larry**=15:42 vested Sue=16:09 Shane**=16:34 Robert**=17:09 vested Dana**=17:11 Herb=18:50 Ed*=19:04 Tim**= 19:30 Dyer*=19:38 Bernie**=19:49 Armando**=20:05 Cheri=20:28 Britt=21:50 Shannon=22:30 Linda=30 Coach=35 ~ Warren A/Alicia/Jan=did it

Notes:

Lots of athletes wanted to lift heavier than usual today, so several got PR's.

The Cicada's are finally here after waiting 17 years. Their fully effective swarm won't arrive for another week or so, if my experience is correct. Their mating song can be deafening. I'm hoping we can avoid squashing them on the mats because they make a disgusting yukky mess that is hard to wash off. The blower is not effective on the squashed ones.

My dog Ginger chases and eats them.

I saw a healthy Rat-Snake this morning around the Barn. It looked like it's been eating chip-munks and moles regularly. I wish Alicia could have seen it 'cause she loves snakes.

Tuesday at 4 PM

[rauthschild]

The Black Sun, April 8th 2024.....

For all those who haven't read the script, the "black sun" refers to: (1) the full Solar Eclipses, such as the one happening on April 8th this year, and (2) efforts by a Progressive Cult to enthrone a Muslim Negro as the ruler of this planet. 

Please note that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are characterized using four colors: red, black, white, and green --- and those just happen to be the flag colors of all the major Muslim nations on Earth.  

This goes along with a lot of other Hoo-Doo-Voo-Doo and occult beliefs, being used as storefront issues to obscure the evil behind this.  

This includes the belief that Jesus was black and that Muhammad was sent as a prophet after Jesus to prepare the way for the Mahdi -- the Muslim version of the Messiah.  

All this is building up to a planned Occult Firestorm of nastiness to be unleashed during the upcoming solar eclipse, when, it is believed, that Allah, a Moon God, is triumphant over the Solar Powers. 

They also believe that this eclipse will open a portal that will signal the end of the world and signal the start of the final jihad.  

Given the recent events in Israel and the senseless slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the nature of the Evil Empire is on full display and the outrage throughout the Muslim world is at a fever pitch.  

We firmly believe that the violence in Gaza was preplanned in Israel to ensure this outrage at this time.  We firmly believe that Britain paid Hamas to attack.  We firmly believe that Israel deliberately let down its border defenses to expedite this, and that the Hamas attack has been used as an excuse for Israel to attack. 

We are witnessing great evil in High Places.  

So, brace yourselves for attacks on all sides and in all jurisdictions, and heed the signs of God, even if they are being orchestrated by the no-longer-secret Space Force using their weather modification technology.  

The Euphrates River has dried up, albeit mainly due to overly ambitious dam projects.  

The Arabian Desert has miraculously developed streams of flowing water and is 80% green again; when the final 20% of Saudi Arabia is clothed in vegetation, another major and "impossible" Bible prophecy will have been fulfilled.  

This leaves only two more prophecies to be fulfilled, and again, they may be fulfilled either by God or by technology in the hands of evil men who have plans to target Southern Illinois and the New Madrid Fault System to create a DIY Great Earthquake.  

They think we are so stupid that we don't know that they have the Scalar Technology to create earthquakes, so despite planning this disaster more or less in the open for twenty years, they think they will face no consequences or blame.  

For whatever their thinking is worth. 

As a result of this pre-planned attack on America, the North American Continent will be split in half from the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Mississippi.  At the same time, the Great Rift Valley of Africa will tear open, so that both sides of the planet will be impacted and feel the Great Earthquake at the same time. 

The whole planet will shake and shift. 

This is the same kind of warfare that took place during the Great Plasma War 32,000 years ago, where terraforming technology was employed to sink some continents and raise others.  

After all this destruction and the ravages of two giant swarms of cicadas, a significant part of the Midwest will be underwater and nobody is quite sure how much farther east the East Coast will be, but it is a no-brainer that millions of lives, mostly American and African, will be lost ---and the Vermin confidently planning all this as part of their Black Sun holiday, think that they will get away with it. 

They will sanctimoniously commiserate these terrible "Acts of God" --- but we will know that God had nothing to do with it. 

Death, pestilence, famine....earthquakes, wars....and, yes, a great denouement, an apocalypse revealing that the governments of the Earth have been reduced to commercial corporations, and the apostate Church has indeed been glutting on the wealth of her fornication with them.  

What more do we need to suffer before this play script is ended?  A massive conventional war in the Middle East, in which Russia and China and Iran join forces to beat the stuffing out of NATO.  

The United States will be too busy licking its own wounds after the earthquake to play a large part in that.  Between a third and two-thirds of our people will be dead thanks to the "vaccine", the earthquake, the breakdown of the supply chains, and starvation. 

This "plan" is sitting on the desks of members of the DOD at this moment.  This crime, if it happens, is totally on their heads.  

We remind the Generals and the Politicians that in our world, if you don't have an individual right to murder and plunder, you don't have a group right to do so, either.  

Naught into naught is still naught. Crime is crime. 

With the recent finding that our Military was unlawfully converted into a Mercenary Force by Abraham Lincoln, and has functioned as a Mercenary Force ever since,  the very last shreds of any excuse for DOD and the U.S. Department of Defense are gone. 

And here, overseeing the end of the world, who do we have acting as "President" of the United States?  

Joe Biden, who can no longer even read the reports placed in front of him on the podium.  

The only legitimate and actual government of this country is vested in the unincorporated Federation of States and its member States of the Union.  

The Federal Subcontractors are so completely consumed by their own corruption and in-fighting that they are implementing these terrible directives -- and the rank and file members of the military are so confused that the people we pay to protect us, our own sons and daughters, are bent on killing us, instead. 

Time to refuse orders. 

On April 7th, do this: think of the word and feeling of "No" all day long.  

No more craziness.  No more corruption.  No more pedophiles.  No more lies.  No more transhumans.  No more evil doers.  No more war.  No more evil at all.  

Focus your 33 trillion volts on it.  

Imagine all the evil-doers suddenly having a hard time of it, their plans all upset. All their evil intentions are now reflected back at them.  See all their own evil coming back to them, and as it hits, they vanish.  There is no gore, no violence. No drama. They are simply gone, as if they never were. 

Be determined in your refusal of evils.

Enumerate all the detestable things that have been going on, that you can say "No!" to with real vehemence and force.  And say it.  Aloud.  

No more craziness.  No more cruelty.  No more harm.  No more pollution.   No more drama. No more evil at all.  

Tune into your friendly 528 Hz clear channel -- play Whole Tones Music.  Indulge your happiest fantasies. Think positively about all your favorite things. 

And then turn with real determination. Visualize a great big "No!" and say, "No more violence!", "No more war for profit!" "No more craziness!" "No more division!" "No more crooks!" "No more poverty!" "No more fear!" 

No more evil.  Rebuke evil, and it will flee.  

[parttimereporter]

WHO'S THAT BROOD? Get ready for the great cicada invasion of 2024

Get ready! It may not be as scary as giant flying spiders but it’s scary due to the number: Trillions..

Experts are warning that 2024 will be seeing something that only the likes of Thomas Jefferson last witnessed: A massive cicada invasion as broods wake up from their long slumber.

We are about to see something that President Thomas Jefferson saw.. Billions if not trillions of cicadas are about to swarm the United States East Coast..

MORE.. The last time Broods XIX and XIII co-emerged, Thomas Jefferson was president, and the Louisiana Purchase was being finalized.

The is pretty wild–things will get visually wilder as we head into later April and May when this entire event will begin to take place …

We went back in time and found some old newspaper snippets from the year 1800–then when these cicadas were circulating. At that time, the vernacular was to largely call them locusts. The papers in 1800 referred back to 1715 to compare what was about to be seen .. At that time, in 1715, this is how the locust invasion was described: “In the month of May a peculiar kind of grasshopper or flies, called by the English locusts, iffued up from the earth.” It was like a horror movie was being described.

Oh and in case you were wondering, of COURSE there was a horror movie about cicadas called… drumroll: CICADA. Maybe it will be some good b-movie viewing during the real invasion.

Just as long as you are safely watching with your windows closed and cracks of your doors sealed shut..

[sciencespies]

Giant brood of billions of insects set to emerge in US in mass synchronized event

https://sciencespies.com/nature/giant-brood-of-billions-of-insects-set-to-emerge-in-us-in-mass-synchronized-event/

Giant brood of billions of insects set to emerge in US in mass synchronized event

A big event in the insect world is approaching. Starting sometime in April or May, depending on latitude, one of the largest broods of 17-year cicadas will emerge from underground in a dozen states, from New York west to Illinois and south into northern Georgia. This group is known as Brood X, as in the Roman numeral for 10.

For about four weeks, wooded and suburban areas will ring with cicadas’ whistling and buzzing mating calls. After mating, each female will lay hundreds of eggs in pencil-sized tree branches.

Then the adult cicadas will die. Once the eggs hatch, new cicada nymphs fall from the trees and burrow back underground, starting the cycle again.

There are perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 species of cicadas around the world, but the 13- and 17-year periodical cicadas of the eastern US appear to be unique in combining long juvenile development times with synchronized, mass adult emergences.

These events raise many questions for entomologists and the public alike. What do cicadas do underground for 13 or 17 years? What do they eat? Why are their life cycles so long? Why are they synchronized? And is climate change affecting this wonder of the insect world?

We study periodical cicadas to understand questions about biodiversity, biogeography, behavior and ecology – the evolution, natural history and geographic distribution of life. We’ve learned many surprising things about these insects: For example, they can travel through time by changing their life cycles in four-year increments. It’s no accident that the scientific name for periodical 13- and 17-year cicadas is Magicicada, shortened from “magic cicada”.

[embedded content]

Natural history

As species, periodical cicadas are older than the forests that they inhabit. Molecular analysis has shown that about 4 million years ago, the ancestor of the current Magicicada species split into two lineages. Some 1.5 million years later, one of those lineages split again. The resulting three lineages are the basis of the modern periodical cicada species groups, Decim, Cassini, and Decula.

Early American colonists first encountered periodical cicadas in Massachusetts. The sudden appearance of so many insects reminded them of biblical plagues of locusts, which are a type of grasshopper. That’s how the name “locust” became incorrectly associated with cicadas in North America.

During the 19th century, notable entomologists such as Benjamin Walsh, CV Riley, and Charles Marlatt worked out the astonishing biology of periodical cicadas. They established that unlike locusts or other grasshoppers, cicadas don’t chew leaves, decimate crops, or fly in swarms.

Instead, these insects spend most of their lives out of sight, growing underground and feeding on plant roots as they pass through five juvenile stages. Their synchronized emergences are predictable, occurring on a clockwork schedule of 17 years in the North and 13 years in the South and Mississippi Valley. There are multiple, regional year classes, known as broods.

(Chris Simon/CC BY-ND)

IMAGE: The five stages of the periodical cicada underground juveniles. Between each stage the juvenile cicada molts so that it can become larger. Actual size of the fifth-stage nymph is 0.83 inches.

Safety in numbers

The key feature of Magicicada biology is that these insects emerge in huge numbers. This increases their chances of accomplishing their key mission above ground: finding mates.

Dense emergences also provide what scientists call a predator-satiation defense. Any predator that feeds on cicadas, whether it’s a fox, squirrel, bat or bird, will eat its fill long before it consumes all of the insects in the area, leaving many survivors behind.

While periodical cicadas largely come out on schedule every 17 or 13 years, often a small group emerges four years early or late. Early-emerging cicadas may be faster-growing individuals who had access to abundant food, and the laggards may be individuals that subsisted with less.

If growing conditions change over time, having the ability to make this kind of life cycle switch and come out either four years early in favorable times or four years late in more difficult times becomes important.

If a sudden warm or cold phase causes a large number of cicadas to make a one-time mistake and come out off-schedule by four years, the insects can emerge in sufficient numbers to satiate predators and shift to a new schedule.

Broods of cicadas, identified by Roman numerals, emerge on 13- or 17-year cycles. (University of Connecticut, CC BY-ND)

Census time for Brood X

As glaciers retreated from what is now the US some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, periodical cicadas filled eastern forests. Temporary life cycle switching has formed a complex mosaic of broods.

Today there are 12 broods of 17-year periodical cicadas in northeastern deciduous forests, where trees drop leaves in winter. These groups are numbered sequentially and fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. In the Southeast and the Mississippi Valley there are three broods of 13-year cicadas.

Because periodical cicadas are sensitive to climate, the patterns of their broods and species reflect climatic shifts. For example, genetic and other data from our work indicate that the 13-year species Magicicada neotredecim, which is found in the upper Mississippi Valley, formed shortly after the last glaciation.

As the environment warmed, 17-year cicadas in the area emerged successively, generation after generation, after 13 years underground until they were permanently shifted to a 13-year cycle.

But it’s not clear whether cicadas can continue to evolve as quickly as humans alter their environment. Although periodical cicadas prefer forest edges and thrive in suburban areas, they cannot survive deforestation or reproduce in areas without trees.

Indeed, some broods have already become extinct. In the late 19th century, one brood (XXI) disappeared from north Florida and Georgia. Another (XI) has been extinct in northeast Connecticut since around 1954, and a third (VII) in upstate New York has shrunk from eight counties to one since mapping first began in the mid-1800s.

Climate change could also have far-reaching effects. As the US climate warms, longer growing seasons may provide a larger food supply. This may eventually change more 17-year cicadas into 13-year cicadas, just as past warming altered Magicicada neotredecim.

Large-scale early emergences occurred in 2017 in Cincinnati and the Baltimore-Washington metro area, and in 1969, 2003, and 2020 in the Chicago metro area – potential harbingers of this kind of change.

Researchers need detailed high-quality information to track cicada distributions over time. Citizen scientists play a key role in this effort because periodical cicada populations are so large and their adult emergences only last a few weeks.

Volunteers who want to help document Brood X’s emergence this spring can download the Cicada Safari mobile phone app, provide snapshots, and follow our research in real time online at www.cicadas.uconn.edu. Don’t miss out – the next opportunity won’t come until Broods XIII and XIX emerge in 2024.

John Cooley, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut and Chris Simon, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Nature

[impfrost]

so when i looked up the next US eclipse, i was like “2024, wasn’t there something else that year i was waiting for?”. turns out that’s when the 17-year-cicadas are emerging in north Illinois and the 13-years in south Illinois (http://www.cicadamania.com/where.html , broods 13 and 19)

now the eclipse is in April 8th, and the cicadas emerge based on ground temperature, usually late May/early June. but if global warming hits us hard enough, we could have a swarm of locusts as the moon swallows the sun.

[jamesstegall]

The Brood X cicadas are here — and yes, there’s an app for that

A few weeks ago, Michelle Watson woke up to a deafening, steadily oscillating screech. “What the heck is that noise?” she wondered.

She went outside to her yard and saw hundreds of beady-eyed insects enrobed in a thick shell of gold emerging out of the ground and crawling up the trees. What Watson was seeing was the emergence of thousands of Brood X cicadas, part of a billions-strong insect swarm that has lain dormant for 17 years before arising to “scream,” mate— all over about three thunderous weeks.

Watson had spent the past 20 years in Las Vegas, but moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia last year. She’d seen social media posts about the cicadas, which emerge once in a generation across a huge swath of the eastern United States, but figured they were just the usual summer bugs that she’d heard her entire life. “I thought, ‘What’s the big deal?’” she says.

Faced with an onslaught of bizarre creatures, though, she suddenly understood what the big deal was—and did what any modern human would do: She Googled it. Within minutes, she had downloaded Cicada Safari, a cicada-tracking app.

“We’re getting 16,000 photos a day, and at this rate, we are very likely to get half a million observations.” 

Apps like iNaturalist, PictureThis, and PlantIn have become popular respites from the pandemic. Many of these apps act as a digital resource, and allow users to submit photos and video for scientific study. Their success inspired Cicada Safari’s creator Gene Kritsky, an entomologist and biology professor at Mount St. Joseph University, to create his own service as a way of tracking Brood X.

Crowdsourcing has long been a way of gathering information for an event that only happens once in a generation, says Kritsky. Researchers in 1858 wrote to newspaper editors urging them to get readers to write in with observations, while postcards were popular in the first half of the 20th century. By the late 1980s, Kritsky was using a telephone hotline that would often get so drowned in tips that the tape on his voicemail machine would get jammed. In 2004, during the last emergence of Brood X, he urged people to send in observations via email with photos attached. He received about 1,000.

Cicada Safari app allows users to track sightings of cicadas on a map, as well as take photos of insects they spot and submit them to the app. And it is riding a wave, with nearly 180,000 downloads as of publication — not bad for a piece of software that most people won’t use beyond the three-week lifespan of the insects. 

The app has blown away Kritsky’s goal of 5,000 observations, he says. As of June 2, “we have over 400,000 cicada photos submitted,” he says. “We’re getting 16,000 photos a day, and at this rate, we are very likely to get half a million observations.” 

A team of 20 volunteers, including his wife, sift through each photo by hand, checking to make sure the images are clearly visible ones of a Brood X cicada; if the images aren’t clear, they’re deleted. Kritsky hopes that by the time the next major cicada explosion emerges in 2024—a brood in northern Illinois that emerges on a 13-year cycle—he’ll have figured out a way to use artificial intelligence to do the painstaking work.

“I’m just in awe”

Although Cicada Safari is the only cicada tracker on the US App Store, it is capitalizing on some key trends. Nature-based services tap people’s enjoyment of hikes and outdoor parks as the safest way to interact with others during the pandemic, whether they are vaccinated or not. Citizen science apps, meanwhile, offer a family friendly activity that allows anyone to record and submit natural observations. Michelle Watson feels her submissions to the app are “my small way of contributing to that research.” When you’re stuck at home, an app that makes you feel productive and helpful rather than reminding you of an emptying bank account can be powerful.

That’s reflected in the breadth of people engaging in citizen science. Kritsky says Cicada Safari does not collect data on who is using its service, but has seen photos from users of different ethnicities, often with children, and older people in the background. “We wanted the interface to be really simple,” Kritsky says. 

Citizen science apps have succeeded in opening up the conversation and work of research to many people with no science background. Watson, a former paralegal, has now joined a Facebook group dedicated to tracking cicadas, and is also on a group chat with fellow enthusiasts. The app’s leaderboard—a ranking of the top 500 submittors of usable cicada images—shows that she’s currently holding the  No.2 spot in the country, with 3,785 photos at the time of publishing (the leader is at nearly 7,000.)

I can already tell how my return to work will go after this little staycation.

Coworker: How was your long weekend? Me: Fantastic! I made it into the 5000s on the Cicada Safari Leaderboard! Coworker: pic.twitter.com/up92p08fOv

— Juanita Constible (@JMConstible) May 28, 2021

But perhaps what unites these communities most is a feeling that has become foreign to many during the pandemic: awe. Janet Sun, a 23-year-old graduate student in Maryland, remembers the last emergence of Brood X, and fondly recalls picking up their shedded exoskeletons. “It was a magical memory for me,” Sun said in a Twitter DM. “I had the impression they were three inches long because I was so much smaller last time.”

Watson agrees. “I have never seen anything like this,” she says. “They curl out of the ground, climb up the tree, molt, and inflate their wings in a matter of a few hours. You see their life cycle right before your eyes. I’m just in awe.”

from MIT Technology Review https://ift.tt/3uNS7jJ via IFTTT

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt:

Spring has sprung in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing with it a wide range of wildlife. Warming weather spurs lots of animals to get back to work after winter, including many familiar insects like bees, butterflies, crickets and ladybugs.

And across eastern North America, spring also periodically brings another, even buzzier wildlife boom: huge swarms of "periodical cicadas," insects that spent the previous 13 or 17 years living underground. This kind of cicada exists only in North America, with seven species divided into more than two dozen broods, each emerging in a different year. In 2017, Brood VI cicadas are expected to emerge across several U.S. states — namely Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, but also possibly others — for the first time since 2000 and the last time until 2034.

Last time they emerged in the Chicago area was 2007. I remember our dogs liked eating them (they gained weight), wherever we walked we were accompanying by the crunch crunch noise, they flew into our clothes and hair, neighbors were using shovels to clear out their hibernating shell thing (and the dead cicadas following their one-night stand), and the noise was cool at first and then irritating. Have to wait until 2024 to enjoy all that again.