(ConservativeJournal.org) – Two different broods of cicadas are slated to emerge from their decades long hibernation over the following weeks and inundate the Midwest and southeast with their buzzing trill. The simultaneous emergence of the different broods is a rare occurrence, and it will cover southern Wisconsin to the Carolinas with the large noisy bugs. Experts are predicting insane numbers of individual insects, suggesting there could be as many as a hundred trillion cicadas coming out of the ground shortly.
Broods XIX and XIII are primarily located in the central and south eastern part of the country. They don’t overlap areas and aren’t anticipated to interbreed. Cicada broods vary in the number of years they require in underground hibernation. Brood XIX is on a 13-year hibernation period while brood XIII is on a 17-year cycle. The last time they emerged together was 1803 and they won’t do so again until 2076.
Brood XIII occupies southern Wisconsin, central Illinois, and some parts of Iowa, Michigan, and Indiana. Brood XIX occupies the largest space across the U.S., nesting in southern Iowa across to the Carolinas as well as parts of the deep south.
Their emergence is expected to annoy residents as the noisy but harmless insects will flutter about attempting to mate before they die off leaving tons of corpses in their wake and the next generation in the ground.
The cicadas are expected to cover homes, trees, automobiles, basically any outdoor surface during the peak of their mating period. Observers have already reported boreholes in Georgia, suggesting the earliest risers are already beginning to come out.
Paula Shresbury is an entomologist with the University of Maryland, she said that the simultaneous emergence will reveal more cicadas than ever before. The bugs will come out en masse once the ground reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit and stays there consistently.
Saad Bhamla is a biotechnology professor with the Georgia Institute of Technology. He suggested the simultaneous emergence was akin to an alien species coming out of the ground every so often.
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