Cicada brood 2025: Does the insect emergence mean a noisy Columbus summer?
Columbus' upcoming spring will be relatively quiet as its cicadas remain firmly underground.
Southwest Ohio will have no such luck.
Cicadas from Brood XIV have been living underground for 17 years, waiting to climb out of the earth and begin mating. They will have their chance this spring when they are set to emerge throughout southwest Ohio, filling the air with buzzing noises and littering nature with discarded cicada shells.
Here is what you need to know about the bugs.
Cicadas will emerge in over a dozen southwest Ohio counties in area that goes as far east as Washington County and as far north as Greene County, Elizabeth Christopher, a program administrator at the Ohio Division of Forestry, said.
Brood XIV will also emerge as far south as Georgia and as far north as Massachusetts, she said.
Cicadas do not travel very far, so it is unlikely that a cicada from southwest Ohio would find its way to Columbus. The nearest Brood XIV county is Greene County, around 60 miles away.
Franklin County's cicada brood, Brood X, last emerged in 2021. That means they will not be seen again until 2038.
Periodical cicadas begin their life cycles as nymphs on trees, where they feed on sap before dropping to the ground. Then, they dig into the ground and begin feeding on sap from plant roots, according to the National Museum of Natural History.
"They're just kind of chilling down there," Christopher said.
They keep living underground for 13 or 17 years, depending on the brood. When it is time for them to emerge, they wait until the ground warms and then come out to mate.
The male cicadas then vibrate their bodies to make the bugs' iconic chirping or buzzing noise to attract a mate. Once they mate, the female lays her eggs on trees. The adult cicadas, which only live for three or four weeks after emerging from the ground, die shortly after.
The cicadas come out all at once as a means of predator satiation, an adaptation where a prey species' population density increases drastically so that predators can't possibly eat them all, according to Everyday Concepts.
Cicadas are not dangerous to pets or people. They do not bite or sting, according to Christopher.
"There's no reason to be afraid of them," she said.
They can sometimes mildly damage trees with their eggs, but most plants can survive it, according to the Texas Tree Foundation.
Breaking and Trending News Reporter Nathan Hart can be reached at NHart@dispatch.com and at @NathanRHart on X and at nathanhart.dispatch.com on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Cicada brood 2025: Does the insect emergence impact Columbus?
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