Brood X Cicada Invasion

Brood X Cicada Invasion!

May 2004

click images or captions to enlarge!

silhouette of a lone cicada resting on a branch

Three different species of cicada native to the eastern United States have life cycles unique in the insect world. These harmless insects live underground in nymph form for 14 or 17 years, emerging en masse at the end of the time period to shed their larval shells to metamorphose into rather ugly, inch-and-a-half-long adults whose only purpose in their remaining life is to mate and lay eggs, then die after about a month. At the peak of their emergence, the males’ mating calls overwhelm parks and entire neighborhoods with an alternatively shrill and melodic chirping song. As far as insects go, they’re clumsy fliers, liable to bump into anything from car windshields to buildings to people.

What makes the “periodic” cicada especially fascinating is the way they emerge at the same time like clockwork. A number of distinct “broods” have been identified by entomologists, labeled by Roman numeral, where large numbers emerge at the same time. The largest of these emergences is Brood X, whose last emergence occurred in May 2004 and affected a wide area in varying degrees north to southern New York, east to New Jersey, west to eastern Indiana, south to north central Virginia and southwest to Tennessee, and included the major metropolitan areas of Washington, DC, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Louisville, and Philadelphia. Billions of cicadas laid billions of eggs (no exaggeration) in the 2004 emergence.

In the Washington area, the cicadas began to appear around May 10, and they were all gone by early June. Brood X won’t be back until 2021.

Washington, DC

These low-res digital images show different stages of metamorphosis from larval nymph to adulthood. The process can take a few hours before a fully mature adult is able to fly.

Other images from the Mall in Washington


Discarded nymph shells in a natural setting…	…and all over a temporary fence.	A lone cicada on the fence	Another lone cicada on a tree branch	This may not look like much, but there were patches of the Mall where they were highly concentrated	This bird snatched a free meal out of the air

Arlington, VA

These images are organized by neighborhood.

Bluemont

The parks, less likely to be touched by development 17 years ago, were hotbeds of cicada activity. These images are from Bluemont Junction Regional Park.

The first image depicts a mating pair.

Radnor/Ft. Myer Heights

These images were taken on the grounds of the National Marine Corps (Iwo Jima) Memorial.

Lyon Village

A typical middle-class suburban neighborhood (as typical as the DC suburbs get, anyway), Lyon Village was founded in the early 20th century and bears none of the characteristics of a modern planned development or subdivision.







A number of cicadas flying around.	A small patch of ground pockmarked by tunnels left by burrowing larvae on their way to the surface.	A typical (and smelly) sight – larva shells and emerging cicadas that didn’t make it litter the base of this tree.

Return Home

Questions and/or comments? E-mail me here.

All images on this site are copyright © 1995-2005 by the webmaster. You may copy and paste to your heart’s desire, but please do not claim any of my images on this site as your own. Thank you for visiting!