Entomologist Marianne Alleyne.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A tough semester and an even tougher year have just ended. I need a break. I’m fully vaccinated and want to escape the yearlong lockdown. And I’m an entomologist. What do I do?
I grab my best friend, also an entomologist, and we hit the road, of course. This is the year of my people’s “Woodstock.”
This Brood X Magicicada gets an entomologist’s thumbs up.
I call up my family to tell them I am coming to the D.C. area to visit them. But they know full well why I chose this particular time to brave the Beltway. After 17 years in the ground sucking on tree roots – far longer than the one year I’ve spent in my home office located too close to the fridge – millions of periodical Brood X cicadas, of the genus Magicicada, are to emerge. And I just have to be part of this natural wonder.
A freshly molted Magicicada adult, or a Las Vegas showgirl?
So here I am, in my pajamas in the backyard of our humdrum basement rental in D.C. I’m kind of mad at myself for forgetting to bring my good camera – but the oversight is enabling me to just enjoy this natural wonder.
A Magicicada adult emerges from its nymphal case. Note the still-deflated wings.
Every night, we quietly lurk in the dark at the edge of the lawn to listen for the rustling of dried leaves as the cicadas come out of their burrows. It’s a bit creepy, but also stunning to consider how many of them got the message to emerge at this time in this particular year. Many of the nymphs crawl up any vertical surface available to them: trees, ferns, tomato cages, lawn furniture. With a flashlight, we watch how hard they work to change into their adult winged shape. At first, they appear ghostlike. A friend says cicadas at this stage “look like a Vegas showgirl wearing a black bikini top, a fabulous skirt and big red earrings.”
An adult cicada is a bit dazed after emerging from the soil after 17 years underground.
Hundreds of nymphs emerged and left their castoff exoskeletons on a tree trunk.
Every morning, we wake up to discover hundreds of empty nymphal cicada cases and adult cicadas just chillin’, waiting for their exoskeleton and wings to harden. After a few hours, they start flying up, up, up into the high trees. Soon, they will work together to create a wall of sound, find mates, lay eggs and die. Their offspring will fall from the trees, burrow into the ground and feed for another 17 years. I will again be there to witness their emergence – next time with a better camera.
Editor’s notes:
Marianne Alleyne is interested in how biological systems can lead to innovative design in human society. The Alleyne Bioinspiration Col-lab-orative studies the surface features of the wings of various cicada species, including those in Brood X, because they have superhydrophobic and antimicrobial functionalities.
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