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Brood XXIII Magicicada Periodical

Brood XXIII, the Lower Mississippi Valley brood, will emerge in 2028

Brood XXIII, the Lower Mississippi Valley brood, will emerge in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana, in the spring of 2028.
Brood XXIII stragglers are emerging in 2024!
Brood XXIII last emerged in 2015.

About Brood XXIII:

Species:

The cicada species that will emerge are Magicicada tredecim (Walsh and Riley, 1868); Magicicada neotredecim Marshall and Cooley, 2000; Magicicada tredecassini Alexander and Moore, 1962; and Magicicada tredecula Alexander and Moore, 1962. These periodical cicadas have a 13-year life cycle.

All the counties/parishes:

Here is a list of the Counties where Brood IV periodical cicadas have appeared in the past. The data comes from the Cicada Central Magicicada Database.

  • Arkansas counties: Bradley, Calhoun, Carroll, Chicot, Clark, Cleburne, Cleveland, Columbia, Conway, Craighead, Crawford, Crittenden, Cross, Dallas, Drew, Faulkner, Franklin, Fulton, Garland, Howard, Independence, Izard, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Marion, Mississippi, Monroe, Montgomery, Newton, Perry, Poinsett, Prairie, Randolph, Saline, Sebastian, St Francis, Stone, Union, Van Buren, Washington, White, Woodruff, Yell
  • Arkansas cities: Bayou Deview Wildlife Management Area, Poinsett County, Devalls Bluff, Harrisburg, Holland Bottoms, Jacksonville, Jonesboro, Knox Co., Lake Hogue, Lake Poinsett State Park, Little Rock, and Wynne.
  • Illinois counties: Alexander, Champaign, Clark, Crawford, DeWitt, Edwards, Jackson, Lawrence, Logan, Macon, McLean, Perry, Piatt, Pulaski, Randolph, Richland, St Clair, Union, Vermilion, Wabash, Williamson
  • Illinois cities: Anna, Carbondale, Carterville, Chester, Clinton Lake, Giant City State Park, Marissa and Robinson.
  • Indiana counties: Bartholomew, Clay, Daviess, Franklin, Gibson, Greene, Harrison, Jackson, Jefferson, Knox, Lawrence, Parke, Perry, Pike, Posey, Putnam, Ripley, Spencer, Sullivan, Vanderburgh, Warrick
  • Indiana cities: Harmonie State Park, Hymera, Leanne, Richland, Sullivan And Posey Counties.
  • Kentucky counties: Ballard, Barren, Calloway, Carlisle, Christian, Clinton, Crittenden, Daviess, Fulton, Grant, Graves, Hardin, Hickman, Hopkins, Lee, Logan, Lyon, Marshall, McCracken, Metcalfe, Muhlenberg, Ohio, Simpson, Todd, Trigg, Warren, Webster
  • Kentucky cities: Benton, Calvert City, Gilbertsville, Henry County, Murray, and Paducah.
  • Louisiana counties: Bienville, Caddo, Caldwell, Catahoula, East Feliciana, Jackson, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Ouachita, Pointe Coupee, Richland, Tangipahoa, Tensas, Washington, Webster, West Carroll
  • Louisiana cities: Bastrop, Choudrant, Grayson and West Monroe.
  • Mississippi counties: Adams, Alcorn, Amite, Attala, Benton, Calhoun, Carroll, Choctaw, Claiborne, Clarke, Clay, Coahoma, Copiah, Covington, DeSoto, Franklin, Grenada, Hinds, Holmes, Issaquena, Itawamba, Jasper, Jefferson, Kemper, Lafayette, Lamar, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Lee, Leflore, Lincoln, Lowndes, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Montgomery, Neshoba, Newton, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, Panola, Pike, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Quitman, Rankin, Scott, Sharkey, Simpson, Sunflower, Tallahatchie, Tate, Tishomingo, Warren, Washington, Yalobusha, Yazoo
  • Mississippi cities: Alva, Arlington, Booneville, Brandon, Clinton, Corinth, Desoto County, Florence, French Camp, Hernando, Holcomb, Houlka, Jackson, New Albany, Oxford, Potts Camp, Silver Creek, Tishomingo, and Water Valley.
  • Tennessee counties: Carroll, Cheatham, Chester, Decatur, Dyer, Fayette, Gibson, Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, Henderson, Henry, Humphreys, Lake, Lauderdale, Madison, Maury, McNairy, Montgomery, Obion, Rutherford, Shelby, Stewart, Tipton, Wayne, Weakley, Williamson
  • Tennessee: Atoka, Benton, Cordova, Henry County, Huntingdon, Jackson, Lavinia, Leach, Lexington, McNeary County, Memphis, Paris, Savannah, and Speedwell.

More location tips:

Here are the locations where folks reported the cicadas to Cicada Mania in 2002:

Brood XXIII reports from 2002

Brood XIII Map from Marlatt, C.L.. 1907. The periodical cicada. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Bureau of Entomology:

Marlatt 1907 23 Brood XXIII

The Latest (from 2015):

The most popular question in the comments: “how long will they last”. The typical answer is about 4 weeks of singing or less. They sing to meet a mate, and once they mate a few times, they run out of energy and die. Four weeks is the typical time, although this varies depending on the weather. The cicadas will complete their mission faster if there are drier, calm days in with temps in the 80s.

My gallery of photos from Brood XXIII.

The Giant City State Park area of Illinois was loaded with cicadas. This area has all four species. It isn’t easy to tell the difference between M. neotredecim and M. tredecim, but you might notice a difference in the coloration of their abdomens (tredecim is almost all orange, while neotredecim is orange and black). There is also a difference in the pitch of their calls when they are in close proximity, so you might hear an odd dissonance in their calls. M. tredecim pitches lower. I will post photos, videos and sounds later in the week.

There are plenty of cicadas in the Land Between the Lakes area of Kentucky & Tennessee. The best place so far was Kenlake State Resort Park where M. tredecassini, M. tredecula, and M. tredecim are chorusing. The tredecula and tredecim were up in the trees out of reach, but I was able to find a few tredecim (the bigger ones with very-orange abdomens) in the weeds at ground level.

Cold and rain (and road weariness) has prevented me from locating cicadas in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas — I know they’re there but if I can’t hear them, I can’t investigate. I’m headed north to Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois. Sun and temps in the 80s should make for good cicada observation. If you’re wondering why cicadas have suddenly become quiet, it’s typically because of cold temps and rain. Generally, these cicadas like it to be about 77F before they’ll fly and sing. Colder than that, and they’ll chill.

I arrived in the Jackson Mississippi area on May 19th around 3 pm. M. tredecassini were chorusing along route 20 west of Roosevelt State Park, and I found an M. tredecim (below) at a gas station. There were plenty of M. tredecassini and M. tredecula chorusing and courting in the woods behind the Mississippi Museum of Natural History. Neocicada hieroglyphica (a non-periodical cicada) was also calling in the woods.

Gas Station Cicada

Categories
Anatomy Tettigades

Cicada Endosymbionts – Beneficial Bacteria in their Bellies

Update: John Cooley shared his thoughts about this article about the Hodgkinia symbionts. There is a lot more work in this area of research yet to be done.

Update: McCutcheon (Matthew A. Campbella, James T. Van Leuvena, Russell C. Meister, Kaitlin M. Carey, Chris Simon, and John P. McCutcheon) has a new paper that shows Magicicada may have between 20 to 50 variants of Hodgkinia in their gut! Read the paper here. It would seem that the longer the life cycle, the more variants of Hodgkinia will be present in cicadas.

Here is the species used in the study: Magicicada tredecim:
M. tredecim

From the October 5th, 2014 post:

xylem soda

Most people know how termites rely on microbes in their gut to break down the wood they consume into nutrients their insect bodies can use. Even human beings benefit from bacteria to help digest certain carbohydrates, fight pathogens and produce certain vitamins (like K and B12).

Cicadas also benefit from microbial endosymbionts. Cicadas, for most of their lives, consume a diet of xylem sap, drawn from the roots of trees. There are two types of sap: xylem and phloem. Phloem is the delicious, sugary one — in Maples, it’s Maple Syrup. Xylem is the “Diet” version of that. Thankfully cicadas have bacteria in their gut that process the xylem sap into nutrients cicadas can actually use.

Recently it was discovered that one such bacteria (Hodgkinia) has become two distinct bacteria in some cicadas belonging to the genus Tettigades. This discovery was documented in the paper Sympatric Speciation in a Bacterial Endosymbiont Results in Two Genomes with the Functionality of One by James T. Van Leuven, Russell C. Meister, Chris Simon, John P. McCutcheon (link http://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(14)01037-X).

Division of Labor What’s interesting is the Hodgkinia bacteria became two distinct species for no particular discernible reason (nonadaptive evolution). Separate, either of the species would be useless to the cicada because they produce an incomplete set of nutrients, but together they produce the compete set of nutrients. Two function as one, that once was just one. Ed Yong does a thorough job of explaining this on National Geographic. According to Yong’s article McCutcheon thinks they know how it happened (explained in the article and paper). Why it happened is another matter — of course how and why might be the same thing deep in the soggy bowels of a cicada.

Chris Simon, let me know that she is working on a paper that will discuss bacteria found in Magicicada. It will be interesting to learn what they find in the bellies of those long-living cicadas.


Categories
Allen F. Sanborn Argentina Maxine E. Heath

One new genus, and 15 new species of cicada in Argentina

Allen F. Sanborn & Maxine S. Heath published a new paper about cicadas titled The cicadas of Argentina with new records, a new genus and fifteen new species (Hemiptera: Cicadoidea: Cicadidae) in Zootaxa Vol 3883, No 1, in November of 2014. Website for the document.

The abstract of the paper reveals some exciting discoveries:

  1. 108 species belonging to 37 genera, eight tribes, and three subfamilies of cicadas are represented in the Argentine cicada fauna.
  2. The new genus is Torresia Sanborn & Heath gen. n.
  3. New species:
    1. Adusella signata Haupt, 1918 rev. stat.
    2. Alarcta micromacula Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    3. Chonosia longiopercula Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    4. Chonosia septentrionala Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    5. Dorisiana noriegai Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    6. Fidicinoides ferruginosa Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    7. Guyalna platyrhina Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    8. Herrera humilastrata Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    9. Herrera umbraphila Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    10. Parnisa lineaviridia Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    11. Parnisa viridis Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    12. Prasinosoma medialinea Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    13. Proarna alalonga Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    14. Proarna parva Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    15. Torresia lariojaensis Sanborn & Heath sp. n.
    16. Torresia sanjuanensis Sanborn & Heath sp. n.

    4. The document is 94 pages long.

Categories
Genera

Cicada Tribes

Here’s another cicada wordcloud. This time it’s cicada Tribes. The largest text represents the most common Tribe by number of species within that tribe.

Cicada Tribes: talaingini plautillini orapini sonatini taphurini huechysini fidicinini cicadatrini platypleurini carinetini cryptotympanini cicadettini toseninicicadini burbungini hyantiini dazini gaeanini dundubiini zammarini polyneurini chlorocystini prasiini parnisini tibicinini

For folks who are sight impaired, the two largest tribes are Cicadettini and Cicadini.

Source of names:

Sanborn, A. (2014) Catalogue of the Cicadoidea (Hemiptera: Auchenorrhyncha). Academic Press/ Elsevier, London.

Categories
Genera

The most common cicada genera

I took a list of all cicada species and used the program R to create this wordcloud of cicada genera. The larger the name, the more species there are belonging to that genera.

Genera Wordcloud

The largest genera is Cicada.

Source of names:

Sanborn, A. (2014) Catalogue of the Cicadoidea (Hemiptera: Auchenorrhyncha). Academic Press/ Elsevier, London.

Categories
Cicadettini David Emery L. W. Popple Nathan Emery Yoyetta

Four new cicada species in Australia

According to Nathan Emery on Twitter, four new species of cicadas belonging to the genus Yoyetta have been described:

  • Y. cumberlandi sp. nov.
  • Y. fluviatilis sp. nov.
  • Y. nigrimontana sp. nov.
  • Y. repetens sp. nov.

See this paper for more information:

Emery, N.J., Emery, D.L., & Popple, L.W. (2015) A redescription of Yoyetta landsboroughi (Distant) and Y. tristrigata (Goding and Froggatt) (Hemiptera: Cicadidae) and description of four new related species. Zootaxa 3948 (3): 301—341.

Categories
Researchers

Cicada People

Cicada People

A little fun before the periodical cicada season starts. This is a “wordcloud” of the last names of people who have identified species of cicadas. The bigger the name, the more cicada IDs are attributed to them.

The are a couple of errors (misspelled Stal, split up Van Duzee). If you’re interested in making your own wordcloud, you can use the program R with the R package wordcloud.

Categories
Magicicada Periodical U.S.A. Video

Time to start looking for signs of periodical cicadas

Depending on where you live, it might be warm enough for periodical cicadas to start moving around underground, or start digging tunnels to the surface and building cicada “chimneys” above their holes.

What to look for:

1) Animals can hear the cicadas stirring underground, and will try to dig them up and eat them. Look for holes (about the size of a walnut or larger) made by animals digging for cicadas.

Brood II; Cicada Holes

2) Look for cicadas under stones and slates. Some cicadas will burrow their way to the surface, but they hit a large stone or slate and can go no further.

If you find them in this situation, gently put the stone or slate back. They will usually find their way around the obstruction once the time is right.

One clue that a Magicicada nymph is not ready to emerge is its eyes are still white. Their eyes turn red/orange before emerging (a few retain a white/blue color).

3) Cicada holes are about the size of a dime. Cicadas preemptively dig holes to the surface and wait until the weather is nice enough for them to emerge. Sometimes you can see them down in the holes.

Magicicada holes
Magicicada holes

4) Cicadas form chimneys above their holes when the soil is moist or muddy. These chimneys might look like a simple golf ball-sized dome or a structure over six inches tall.


Photo by Roy Troutman.

Brood II 2013 - Dan Mozgai - Cicada Chimneys

Periodical cicadas typically won’t emerge until their body temperature reaches approximately 65 degrees Fahrenheit (17-19.5 Celsius1). Their bodies are warmed by surrounding soil or warm water from rain. A good rule of thumb is, if the soil 8 inches(20 cm) deep is 65°F, the conditions are good that they might emerge.

And here’s how to tell if a nymph is ready to molt:

A diagram that shows when a nymph is ready to molt.

1Heath, J.E. 1968. Thermal synchronization of emergence in periodical “17-year” cicadas (Homoptera. Cicadidae, Magicicada). American Midland Naturalist 80:440—448.

Categories
Arts & Crafts Callogaeana Cryptotympana Hemisciera Tacua Talainga Thopha Tosena Zammara

Better IDs for E.A. Seguy Cicada Illustrations

The NCSU Libraries Rare and Unique Digital Collections website recently reminded the us of artist Eugene Alain (E.A.) Seguy’s insect illustrations. Seguy created these illustrations in the 1920’s, and as you might imagine, some of the cicada names cited in the notes for these illustrations have changed. Names typically change when cicadas are reclassified due to discoveries about their biology, or when we realize that someone else had actually named them earlier than the namer currently given credit.

Here are the two illustrations, the accompanying identification, and corrected identifications.

Illustration:

EA Seguy Cicada Art

Accompanying identification:

1. Tacua speciosa. Indes; 2. Polyneura ducalis. Indes Or.; 3. Cicada saccata. Australie; 4. Cicada fascialis. Siam; 5. Tozena melanoptera. Indes Or.

Corrected or expanded identification:

  1. Tacua speciosa. This is correct, although there are two subspecies of T. speciosa, I’m going to guess it is Tacua speciosa speciosa (Illiger, 1800) based on the location.
  2. Polyneura ducalis. This is correct. Polyneura ducalis Westwood, 1840.
  3. Cicada saccata. This is now: Thopha saccata (Fabricius, 1803).
  4. Cicada fascialis. This is now: Cryptotympana facialis facialis (Walker, 1858). Update: David Emery says this might be a Cryptotympana acuta (Signoret, 1849).
  5. Tozena melanoptera. Close enough. Tosena melanoptera melanoptera (White, 1846). There are a few unnamed subspecies.

Illustration:

EA Seguy Cicada Art

Accompanying identification:

1. Goeana festiva. Indes; 2. Zammara tympanum. Amérique du Sud; 3. Goeana ochracea. Indes; 4. Phenax variegata. Brésil; 5. Hemisciera maculipennis. Amazone

Corrected or expanded identification:

  1. Goeana festiva is actually Callogaeana festiva festiva (Fabricius, 1803).
  2. Zammara tympanum. This is correct. Zammara tympanum (Fabricius, 1803).
  3. Goeana ochracea is way off. It is a Talainga binghami Distant, 1890.
  4. Phenax variegata is not a cicada, is it a fulgoroid planthopper, but the id is correct.
  5. Hemisciera maculipennis is correct. Hemisciera maculipennis (de Laporte, 1832) aka the “Stop and Go” cicada, because its colors resemble the colors of a stop light.
Categories
Brood IV Brood XXIII Magicicada Periodical Stragglers

2015 Periodical Cicada Emergences

There will be two major periodical cicada emergences in 2015. We’re less that 2 months away!

2015 BROOD IV AND XXIII

Brood XXIII, the Lower Mississippi Valley brood:

This brood of 13 year Magicicada will emerge in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana. Brood XXIII features all four 13 year Magicicada species M. tredecim, M. neotredecim, M. tredecassini and M. tredecula.

When they’ll emerge depends on the weather. A cool spring will mean the emergences will start later in the spring. Regardless of the weather, the emergences will begin in the Southern-most states, sometime in late April or early to mid May.

Brood XXIII should, depending on the weather, start emerging in less than two months; some time in late April in Louisiana.

Brood IV, the Kansan Brood:

This brood of 17 year Magicicada will emerge in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. Brood VI features all three 17 year Magicicada species M. septendecim, M. cassini, and M. septendecula.

Brood IV should start emerging in early May.

Brood IV and XXIII won’t emerge in the same year again until the year 2236. The only state that features both Brood XXIII & IV is Missouri, but the areas where they emerge do not overlap.

Stragglers:

The best bet for Stragglers will be Brood VIII (17 year cicadas emerging 4 years early) & XIX (13 year cicadas emerging 4 years late). There is also a chance for III (17yr/1 year late), V (17yr/1 year early), and XXII (13yr/1 year late). Visit our brood page, to see the states where these stragglers might emerge.