UConn Team Ready To 'Crowdsource' Cicadas

STORRS, CT — A UConn team is ready for the cicada army and one professor said the emergence of the Brood X 17-year periodical cicadas this summer is an opportunity to unite a summertime spectacle with new technology to help scientists study trends for this charismatic insect envoy.

UConn Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Professor Chris Simon and her lab study periodical cicadas, with an interest in their molecular genetics and evolutionary biology.

Her long-time collaborator, UConn Assistant Professor in Residence John Cooley, studies their behavior and ecology. Digging into these questions requires a firm understanding of their geographic distribution therefore the researchers need an accurate cicada census.

The processes for mapping and tracking cicadas has evolved over the years, but one thing has remained the same, Cooley said, while adding. "Crowdsourcing and citizen science have been parts of this story from the very beginning, going back to the 1600s."

It is a big task to track the millions of cicadas emerging every 13 or 17 years and whatever technology is available at the time has played a part in describing the phenomena, including written accounts, postcards, telegraph messages, phone calls, and more recently, email and an app.

With each innovation comes more data, which can be a mixed blessing, said Simon, recounting the data gathering for an emergence of Brood II in 1979.

"I published a story in Natural History Magazine out of the American Museum of Natural History. I got hundreds of letters and post cards from people, and then I had to go through all of those and answer them by hand," Simon said. "I used to have to contact every agricultural extension agent in every county a brood of cicadas occupied and ask them to gather information. I had to go to the county courthouse, meet the agent, pick up a map of each county, get the phone numbers and address for people who reported, and then drive around to each house or farm.”

See more about the sports to track cicadas here.