This year’s double emergence will be a gold mine for scientists trying to unravel the many mysteries of periodical broods.
Periodical cicadas sit on leaves in Rock Creek Park during the Brood X emergence in 2021. This spring and summer, people in parts of the American Midwest and South will get to experience a numerically magnificent wildlife event: a. With the arrival of Brood XIX and Brood XIII, trillions of harmless, baby-carrot-size insects will be singing their hearts out from Wisconsin to Louisiana, Maryland to Georgia, and many places in between.
Cicadas can be broken into two general types: annual cicadas, which tend to have black or green eyes and can be heard every year, and periodical cicadas, which usually have red eyes and only emerge in 13-year or 17-year intervals. This means some questions can only be investigated in certain places at certain times, depending on which broods are on deck that year and which species they contain.This year, though, cicadas from Brood XIX and Brood XIII will butt right up against each other, mostly in Illinois. And this is where things get scientifically exciting.a cicada-afflicting parasite known as Massospora.
Kasson is trying to conduct genetic work to learn more about how the fungus persists in animals with such unusual and disjointed life cycles. This year he will be able collect contemporary samples from a 13-year brood for the first time — old, archived specimens have been used in the past — which could yield some interesting results.
For scientists like Simon, the real opportunity is in much less obvious distinctions. She wants to learn more about how cicada broods count the years, something she’s trying to understand by sequencing whole genomes and looking for genes or groups of genes that control whether a cicada follows the 13- or 17-year cycle.
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