Pennsylvania Game News- June 2009 - 53

space of 200 miles they poisoned and destroyed all the trees of that country; there being found innumerable little holes in the ground, out of which those insects broke forth in the form of maggots, which turned into flyes (sic) that had a kind of taile (sic) or sting, which they stuck into the tree, and thereby envenomed and killed it.” Thus, the misnomer of “locusts.” However, the truth about these insects is even more amazing than the folklore. Because cicada larvae have sucking mouthparts, they are closely related to aphids, scale insects, mealy bugs, and tree and leaf hoppers. Their small, fishlike larvae use sharp beaks to puncture tree rootlets and suck watery liquid out of them as sustenance during their 17 years underground. When one rootlet dies, they move on to another. After more than 10 years as deep as two feet underground, they move closer to the soil surface. One researcher, Monte Lloyd, back in the early 1960s, dug up the larvae at various stages and found that they take a 4-year rest during their underground growth. It is probably the soil temperature — around 64 degrees Fahrenheit — that finally triggers the larvae to emerge from their tunnels after sunset, climb a shrub or small tree, and wriggle out of the exoskeleton of their fifth instar or juvenile stage. The adults are white when they first appear, and cicada connoisseurs recommend eating them at that stage, either plain or sautéed in butter and parsley. ”They have a nutty flavor, almost like a pistachio nut,” writes David George Gordon in his The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook, while Monte Lloyd says “they taste like a cross between an avocado and a raw potato” and maintains that they are delicious. Even after they harden, in a day or so, they are excellent food for spiders, snakes, birds and fish. The largest wasp in the East — the cicada killer — paralyzes a ciJUNE 2009 cada with its sting, pulls it up into a tree, flies to its nest still holding the cicada, and feeds it to its wasp larva. But because of the cicadas’ survival strategy called by researchers “predator satiation” or emerging in overwhelming numbers as high as 1.5 million per acre, predators couldn’t begin to eat all of them. A predator fungus, though, Massopora cicadina, that infects the larvae as they burrow into the soil, can be a problem to populations. The fungus stays with the larvae when they emerge 17 years later, and while infected females mate, they don’t lay eggs. Infected males try to mate with both males and females. This spreads the fungus. But most cicada populations are fungus-free and perform as they should to perpetuate the species. After four days of hardening and rest, the males form aggregations, also referred to as choruses or leks that sexually attract females. There are actually three species of 17-year periodical cicadas, and their calls are their best identifying characteristic. The most common is the phar-oah calling M. septendecim, followed by the ticking and buzzing of M. cassini, and the much rarer M.septendecula, which sounds like a lawn sprinkler. The males produce their songs using ridged membranes on the first segment of 53 bonta.pmd 53 04/28/2009, 1:30 PM

Pennsylvania Game News- June 2009

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