Why are there so many Magicicada periodical cicadas, and what does it have to do with the survival of their species? One of the answers is: Predator Satiation.
A predator is any animal that would eat a periodical cicada, i.e., birds, raccoons, squirrels, dogs, snakes, etc. Satiation, in the case of cicadas, means to supply predators with enough cicadas to eat until they are wary of eating and thus avoid them completely.
Predator satiation works like this:
1) Periodical cicadas emerge in tremendous numbers.
2) Adult cicadas are often timid, even after having sclerotized.
3) The first cicadas that emerge are eagerly consumed by predators.
4) The predators are so overwhelmed by the bounty of easily eaten cicadas, that they fill themselves to the point of disgust and exhaustion.
5) This gives the remaining cicadas a chance to escape the predators.
The first periodical cicadas are literally “fodder”, in the battle between predators and periodical cicadas, to use a war/video game analogy.
Look at this periodical cicada: it is thinking “hopefully this creature will eat me, so my siblings will live on!”
Magicicada on my finger by Dan from Cicada Mania on Vimeo.
The research paper Emergence of 13-Yr Periodical Cicadas (Cicadidae: Magicicada): Phenology, Mortality, and Predator Satiation by Kathy S. Williams, Kimberly G. Smith, and Frederick M. Stephen (Ecology, Volume 74, Issue 4 (Jun., 1993), 1143-1152) is worth reading if you are interested in this topic. They found that predation of cicadas peaks during the first few days of the emergence, and doesn’t resume in significant numbers until three weeks later (see figure 6, if you read the paper).
Unfortunately, this strategy could be detrimental to periodical cicadas in areas with dwindling populations, where there isn’t enough of them to satiate the predators completely.
This strategy might also be used by other types of periodical cicadas like the Chremistica ribhoi of India, or cicadas that emerge in large numbers like Callogaeana festiva of south-east Asia.