17-Year Periodical Cicada Love Song: How To Listen In Ohio

OHIO — Despite the complex evolutionary strategy of the 17-year periodical cicadas, already coming about to come out of the ground in Ohio, these marvels of nature have a simple, almost singular purpose.

Go forth and multiply to ensure the species will emerge again in a monotonous cacophony and — we hate to say it, but nature is brutal, as every Nature Channel aficionado already knows — promptly drop dead after finishing the one job they worked their way out of the ground to do.

Ohio is among 15 and the District of Columbia where Brood X of the 17-year periodical cicadas are due to make a lot of noise in a courtship ritual that ensures the species will survive.

The other states are Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia in addition to the District of Columbia.

To be fair, periodical cicadas don’t just do it and die.

They aerate the soil as they push their way out of the ground; the females prune trees by digging and then laying their eggs in furrows in slender branches; and their decaying bodies are a nitrogen source for trees.

But, read no news headline ever, “The 17-Year Cicadas Are An Rx For Strong Tree Health”?

Admit it.

It’s insect sexy that the males raise their voices — kind of; they vibrate their tymbals, drum-like membranes on their abdomens, which conveys a certain intimacy — in a concerto of cicada romance.

They all — well most of them, again nature is brutal — eventually make it the treetops in this choreographed cicada copulation. The females switch partners, hooking up with as many of the fellas as they can because that’s how the species continues.

And then they die.

“Once in the treetops, hey, it’s all going to be about romance. It’s only the males that sing. It’s going to be a big boy band up there as the males try to woo those females, try to convince that special someone that she should be the mother of his nymphs,” Michael Raupp, an entomologist at the University of Maryland, told The Associated Press. “He’s going to perform, sing songs. If she likes it, she’s going to click her wings. They’re going to have some wild sex in the treetop.

“Then she’s going to move out to the small branches, lay their eggs. Then it’s all going to be over in a matter of weeks. They’re going to tumble down. They’re going to basically fertilize the very plants from which they were spawned. Six weeks later, the tiny nymphs are going to tumble 80 feet from the treetops, bounce twice, burrow down into the soil, go back underground for another 17 years.”

Raupp practically lives for the emergence of periodical cicadas, and he is quoted so often about cicadas’ extraordinarily long life cycle that he emerges along with them every 17 years as the reigning cicada expert.

“This,” he told The AP, “is one of the craziest life cycles of any creature on the planet.”

Other than the dangers from farm and lawn chemicals sprayed on the ground above them, everything’s pretty chill during the 17 years that periodical cicadas — or 13, depending on the species — spend underground. Scientists say Brood X, also known as the Great Eastern Brood, is expected to be the largest ever with potentially trillions of cicadas, burrowed underground as nymphs 17 years ago.

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