Will there be cicadas in Maryland this year? Your guess is as good as ours.
The red-eyed menace known as the 'periodical cicada' has local scientists confidently predicting that the flying insects will definitely appear in Maryland this year. And that they definitely won't.
But, if the flying insect does venture into the Free State in 2025, scientists believe it will be confined to the westernmost portions of Maryland bordering Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Or, the bugs will pop up in your Baltimore backyard.
OK, but those 17-year cicadas — if there are any — will be part of Brood XIV. Or possibly stragglers from Brood X.
The experts disagree. And the bugs themselves aren't granting interviews.
'They all look the same, and unfortunately they don't put numbers on their wings,' cicada expert Gene Kritsky said cheerfully. 'Cicadas are complicated. It's how I got tenure.'
Kritsky and Mike Raupp, a.k.a. 'The Bug Guy' and a professor emeritus of entomology from the University of Maryland, suspect that Brood XIV will likely surface in Garrett and Allegany counties, with possibly a few sightings in Prince George's County. But they aren't certain.
'We'll have to wait and see,' said Kritsky, professor emeritus of biology at Mount Saint Joseph University in Cincinnati, and who has studied cicadas for 42 years.
'Historically, there have been Brood XIV cicadas in all of these places,' he said. 'One of the things we're interested in doing this year is attempting to verify what is really going on.'
Gaye Williams, an entomologist with the Maryland Department of Agriculture, is confident that the Brood XIV bugs will bypass Maryland this year. The closest they will be found, she said, is in portions of central Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
The three experts all know and respect one another. Williams chalked up the discrepancy to 'different ways of interpreting the data' and added:
'There are different definitions of 'stragglers.' Some people think that three or four cicadas count. But, I think there has to be a critical mass.'
U.S. Department of Agriculture records provided by Kritsky appear to confirm that Brood XIV hasn't been spotted in Maryland since 1940. That was 85 years ago.
'That just means that Brood XIV cicadas haven't been counted since then,' he said. 'That doesn't mean the cicadas aren't there. In 2021, I discovered a brood in Ohio that had been missed for two centuries.'
And yet, it's also not unheard of for even previously well-established cicada populations to disappear, vanquished by deforestation and habitat destruction. In 1954, Kritsky said, all of Brood XI went extinct.
Complicating matters, scientists suspect that climate change is accelerating what has long been a 17-year-cycle. Cicadas are exceedingly sensitive to temperature, Kritsky said, appearing as soon as the soil has warmed to 64.9 degrees Fahrenheit, and typically after a soaking rain.
And it has been known for a long time that a small amount of brood 'stragglers' may pop up four years after the main event, like revelers arriving late to a party.
So, it's possible that any cicadas found inside state borders won't be representatives of Brood XIV but laggards from Brood X, which descended on Maryland en masse in 2021.
'They won't be as widespread as they were in 2021,' Kritsky said.
He predicted that the largest concentrations will be found in northwestern Maryland, but wouldn't rule out the bugs occasionally startling pedestrians in the Baltimore region.
Kritsky is urging Marylanders who spot a red-eyed cicada to snap a photo of the bug and to upload it to Cicada Safari, the free app he's developed. Kritsky said he received more than 500,000 photographs nationwide in 2021, creating a goldmine of useful data.
'Even if the cicadas don't appear anywhere in Maryland, that's important information for us to know,' he said.
Have a news tip? Contact Mary Carole McCauley at mmccauley@baltsun.com and 410-332-6704.
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