Round-Up Ready: Cicada Edition

In a neat coincidence, my Grandma and I were both 12 years old the first time the 17-year periodical cicadas, Magicicada Brood II,  emerged. For her they have since returned 5 times (she is 97!), for me, only once. Below is a quick round up of cicada related links.

• For a primer on the life-cycle and life-history of these cicadas and check out these articles at EarthSky, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and LiveScience, which also has a slideshow of 6 Crazy Facts About Cicadas, then watch these videos THE CICADAS ARE COMING! and the beautiful Return of the Cicadas. Of course, nobody does a nature explanation video better than Sir David Attenborough,  

• Over at Biodiversity in Focus, there is a great summary of an elegant experiment that sought to understand how these cicadas manage to keep track of time, hint: it involves tree rings. Oddly enough, it turns out that discovering the mating secrets of cicadas won’t guarantee you tenure.
• If you are fortunate (unfortunate?) enough to be in an area where cicadas are emerging, be sure to use Magicicada and/or Radiolab to help track and predict them.
• Wondering what to do when the cicadas swarm? Consider cooking them up, there is no shortage of recipes out there, and the cookbook Cicada-licious is freely available.

Related articles

• Reading Round-Up: Cicada Edition (yourwildlife.org)
• Time for Cicadas! (membracid.wordpress.com)
• The Cicadas Are Here! (huffingtonpost.com)
• Emergence of 17-year cicadas delayed by cool spring (nj.com)
• Live Cicada Cam: Insects Expected to Hit the East Coast by the Billions (Video) (scienceworldreport.com)
• Prime Numbers Are The Secret To The Cicada’s Success (zen-haven.com)
• 17 year Cicada emergence GIF (itsokaytobesmart.com)