In 2024, Brood XII of 17-year cicadas (Magicicada septendecim, M. cassini, and M. septendecula) are expected to emerge, and so are Brood XIX of 13-year cicadas (Magicicada tredecim, M. neotredecim, M. tredecassini, and M. tredecula). According to the data at cicadamania.com (thanks, @cicadamania !), both groups are predicted to be coming up in Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana.
Is there anyone else here who wants to see them? I have never seen or heard Magicicada species before. Are there any events that you know of that might be happening to honour the first co-emergence of these broods since 1803?
Here is a NatGeo article about this:
Some Americans are getting a preview of summer 2024, when two periodical cicada broods will emerge simultaneously for the first time in 221 years—an event rarer than Halley’s comet.
The article credits iNaturalist with contributing data used by the scientists:
Another popular app for cicada enthusiasts is iNaturalist, a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and National Geographic Society, where Wong has already uploaded more than 103 annual cicada shots in 2023. (Read why citizen science has surged since the pandemic.)
Can the different broods be distinguished in the field? If I observed cicadas from different broods, and did not state in what year I observed each, could their broods be determined?
In other news, expect 2024 to have the noisiest summer in 221 years. A favorite topic of conversation among my older relatives was which of Kentucky’s four broods of periodical cicadas would be serenading us in the coming months.
Seriously, though; I may be one of the few people who looks forward to cicadas emerging in the summer. When I moved to Colorado from Kentucky, the summers didn’t quite feel right to me; I finally figured out that it wasn’t the lack of humidity, it was the lack of cicada song. Now that a couple of species of Dog-day Cicadas have expanded into the metro area, summer days don’t seem as weirdly empty.
EDIT: this was meant to be a general reply to the thread. @jasonhernandez74, I don’t know much about telling one brood from another, except for the various relatives’ fixation on wing markings. That could have some factual basis, or it could be downhome folklore.