Saturday, December 23, 2017

2017: favorite nature moments #9



Jen Roder examines some of the specimens from 2004

This came as a complete surprise: periodical 17-year cicadas where none should be. 

In 2004, we had a big population of these cicadas emerge at Ijams in May. They were part of Brood X and I wrote about it in my first book Natural Histories, but, if you do the math, they are not due back until 2021. But last May some confused ones emerged early. It was first noticed by my supervisor Jen Roder and Ben Nanny. He knew instantly what the golden winged hemipterans were, he was at Ijams in 2004.

We had great fun with it for several days, then the partial emergence fizzled out. 

Click: cicadas appear when none should be

and Ijams cicada news got bigger.

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