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17-year cicadas – here for a good time, not a long time – are out. But which 17-year cicadas?
PERRY COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — In terms of fame and fortune — well, okay… maybe not fortune, but certainly fame! — no brood of 17-year cicadas matches Brood X, which last emerged in 2021.
Anyone old enough also remembers the 2004 emergence, the 1987 one and so forth.
But should Brood XIV (that's 14 rather than 10, for the Roman numeral-impaired) — emerging now — have at least as great a claim to fame?
'This is the brood,' said Dr. John Cooley, who studies cicadas at the University of Connecticut. 'The brood European colonists first encountered.'
Indeed, the 1634 emergence of what would later be identified as Brood XIV cicadas is chronicled in a book called The Pilgrims' Promise by another of the world's most prominent cidada experts, Dr. Gene Kritsky.
Cicadas emerge when soil warms to 64 degrees, and on cue, cicadas in southern Brood XIV territory, such as parts of Tennessee and North Carolina, emerged this spring, both Kritsky and Cooley said. In other parts of what everyone agrees is core Brood XIV territory, such as in Pennsylvania places like Milton closer to I-80, the wet and cool spring delayed the emergence, both said.
But in the Duncannon area of Perry County — and nowhere more so than on the grounds of Buddy Boy Winery and Restaurant in Penn Township — cicadas are everywhere, singing what at least their fans (they do have their detractors) consider a sweet song.
'They're kind of fun, and I like the noise,' said Coreena Warner, who manages the winery.
And for other people?
'If you don't like the noise, it'll be over here in about three weeks,' said Forrest Woodward, the chef, who prepares adventurous dishes like frog's legs and deep-fried rabbit — but nothing cicada.
At least not on the food menu. There is a 'cidada killer' on the drink menu — garnished with two cherries floating on top, like beady red cicada eyes — and a (tasty) mix of liquors and juices but, alas, no actual cicadas in it.
Back to the actual cicadas — and their short stay above ground — it's true: Cicadas are here for a good time, not a long time.
'The have to mate and lay eggs, and the adults die,' Cooley said. Then the eggs hatch into nymphs, which live underground for — in the cases of Broods X and XIV, anyway — 17 years before emerging.
This is Brood XIV's year, so of course the cicadas here should be those, except for one problem, according to Cooley: Duncannon isn't in core Brood XIV territory. Scientists think cicadas count years based on something (no one is sure exactly what) related to the seasonal changes of the deciduous trees on which they feed — 'the same kinds of things that make tree rings,' Cooley said.
Scientists are even less certain how cicadas count to 17, but Cooley said they sometimes make mistakes, and when they do, they miscount by increments of four years. His hunch: Maybe the cicadas here are Brood X 'stragglers.' After all, it's four years beyond 2021.
On the other hand, he said stragglers are usually too small in number to sing loudly together, which is not the case with the ones in the woods around Buddy Boy.
Kritsky said don't discount the possibility these are the real Brood XIV deal: USDA records documented cicadas in the Duncannon area in 1923 and 1940, which would correspond with the cycle.
Both Kritsky and Cooley said a challenge for current cicada scientists is that no one was keeping records like the ones they're keeping — no one crowdsourcing cicada sightings on Kritsky's Cicaca Safari app, which 243,000 people have used to document what they've seen — in centuries past. (Heck, no one began using telephones to gather information about cicadas until the 1970s, Cooley said.)
'Having that many boots on the ground is allowing us to see specifically where the cicadas are coming out and how that relates to other broods,' Kritsky said.
'I'm not going to be around to tell you whether what's actually happening,' Cooley said. 'but 'We leave that to future generations to tell us.'
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