I created a category for community scientist crowd sourcing projects. These are projects for you, the people, who want to help cicada researchers & scientists study cicadas.
Here are more ways you can help cicada researchers study cicadas:
Project 1:
Chris Simon and the Simon Cicada Lab need your help with a couple of projects:
We at the Simon Lab are anxious to get the word out that we are very interested in finding upcoming Brood II locations with lots of flagging (broken branches and wilted stems that should turn brown in late June or July or sooner down south).
When cicadas lay eggs they cause some damage to tree branches called flagging. It is easy to spot the brown patches of leaves. The Simon Lab want your sightings of flagging come the end of June and July.
A form to submit your sightings will be available soon.
Project 2:
Also we need to continue to crowd source locations of spring stragglers from any brood in any year.
A straggler is a periodical cicada that emerges years in advance of the rest of its brood. Typically they emerge four years in advance. An example of this is the cicadas that emerged in Ohio this year. Please let us know if you see a periodical cicada outside the Brood II area.
You can probably use this form for that.
Next year (2014), folks in western New York state might see some stragglers from Brood VII (due 2018) for example.
This chart will give you an idea of when stragglers can be expected. The best bet is -4 years for 17 year broods, and +4 for 13 year broods.
I’ve added straggler probabilities to this brood chart.
Note to self: read Periodical Cicada (Homoptera: Cicadidae) Life-Cycle Variations, the Historical Emergence Record, and the Geographic Stability of Brood Distributions by David Marshall.
Future projects:
There will be at least one more major crowd sourcing project coming soon. Stay tuned!
Interesting projects. I will spread the word. I thought there were 13 years cicadas well as 17 year ones. Maybe they’re not stragglers but another species?
There are 13 and 17 year species but not within the same brood.