Cicada Journals September 1 to September 30, 2005
09/28/05 - Welcome to the New Massachusetts Cicadas Web Site!
Well, after several weeks of re-design work, I'm happy to say that I finally implemented the new design. I hope you all enjoy it. It did take longer than I anticipated due to making sure everything worked in as many browsers as possible. If you see any problems kindly report them by using the "Email Me" link below and to the left.
What has changed?
First, I decided to get rid of the Cicada Journals and Archives 2004 and 2005 links and have incorporated the contents of both these pages into just a single Cicada Journals page. Now you can find links to archives from 2004 and 2005 as well as links to future archived dates.
The link to the Cicada Gallery has been temporarily removed because to be honest, I don't know exactly when I'm ever going to be able to create one. I think that I may have to incorporate some sort of database in order to house all the images on - that are scattered throughout the site. Instead, I have decided to add to the Cicada Navigation to the left a series of links to cool cicada galleries from around the world wide web.
If you have cicada images on your web site then drop an email to me and I will add it. Also please remember that there are tons of images scattered throughout this web site. All you have to do is surf around, you'll find tons in the links to the different pages in the cicada journals and archives pages as well as in other areas of this site like the Cicada Morphologies pages as well as Noted Cicada Behaviors pages.
New Links have been added!
Animal Trek - These guys emailed me to let me know that they added our web site to their list of Cicada web sites in their directory. We of course returned the favor. Animal Trek is a directory that has listings of web sites on animals and insects on the World Wide Web.
North American Insects and Spiders - Cirrus
Digital Imaging
A catalog of over 3,500 high-resolution close-up photographs of live, unposed
insects and spiders with taxonomy and natural history. This site has some
nice images of Tibicen
linnei and Tibicen
canicularis.
This Yahoo! group was started by me. I'm trying to get as many members in the science community as well as other experts and enthusiasts to join. This group is dedicated to the study and science of insects from the family Cicadidae. If you are from the United States, Canada, Mexico or anywhere else in the world that has Cicadas then you are invited to join. Post questions, sitings, pictures or any other information whether scientific or general interest about Cicadas here. ALL MEMBERS MUST BE APPROVED FIRST. WHEN YOU JOIN AN APPROVAL REQUEST WILL BE SENT TO ME. THIS CUTS DOWN ON SPAM POSTINGS.
Whats Up In The Future
Hopefully soon, this web site will be changing its focus. There is so much study that needs to be done on Cicadas. In reading a lot of literature, most of it seems to be way out of date. To that end, the focus of this web site will no longer be in Cicadas of Massachusetts but may, in the future incorporate all of New England, so this web site, which focusses on Cicadas of Massachusetts may change to Cicadas of New England or New England Cicadidae. I haven't yet decided on how I will go about this but I feel it is something that needs to be done.
Besides, this past summer, I spent a lot of time in Connecticut studying
Tibicen chloromera and
will probably be continuing this for years to come. Also not much information
is available on the distributions of Cicada species in the other New England
states ie; Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island, so visits to
these states will probably be necessary.
As you probably know by now, my journal updates are way behind, that is because of all the redesign work that went into this web site. I will try to play catch up over the next couple of days as well as post those pictures of the New Zealand cicada specimens that my friend Kees in New Zealand sent me.
09/29/05 - End of the Cicada Season?
Man, it really seemed like a short season as far as studying Cicadas go. Tibicen lyricens stopped calling here in Massachusetts around the beginning of September. Tibicen canicularis hasn't been calling for about a week now but it has been unusually cool the last week or so.
Fortunately on September 5th I managed to make it to Connecticut one more time. Below is my account of that day.
Two Male Tibicen lyricens Snagged!
On
September 5th I made one final trip to Connecticut to see if I could continue
to track Tibicen chloromera's
northern most range. Unfortunately, even in Connecticut there didn't seem
to be that many Tibicen chloromera cicadas calling. However, I
wasn't deterred in the least because I wanted to see if I could capture
some other species of cicadas using my friend Mike's fancy net with all
the extension poles.
This worked like a charm. I found myself at this nursery in Northern Connecticut and thanks to the big net I was able to snag two male Tibicen lyricens.
The behavior of these Tibicen lyricens in the wild are so much different than Cicadas that have been captured during the eclose (molting from nymph) process.
The alarm squawks that these male cicadas made when captured was very loud as opposed to male cicadas that I obtained during molting. Check out the male timbal development in Noted Cicada Behaviors - Sexual Development section.
Click the link below to hear the alarm squawk of the above Tibicen lyricen.
Other Unusual Male Tibicen lyricen Calling Behaviors Observed.
Calling when flying - One thing I never really noticed before but due to these nursery trees being not as tall as a full grown tree, I was able to observe these cicadas calling relatively close to the ground. I observed one male calling while walking up and down the main trunk of the tree and flicking it's wings. Then all-of-a-sudden, it flew to an adjacent tree while still calling during its flight!! This is truly an amazing observed behavior. I wonder if this happens a lot with Tibicen lyricen males.
Want to know what the call of a male Tibicen lyricen sounds like? Click the below thumbnail to watch a brief movie. Unfortunately, you can't see the cicada in the video but you can hear him.
Calling even when netted - Another male was netted in the middle of it calling for a mate. The unusual thing about this is that the male was still calling for a female even while in the net! Maybe it didn't realize that it was captured. Once it was in the net, I slowly lowered the net down and it called all the way until I had the net on the ground and grabbed it within the net, then it started to squawk like crazy.
Males Will Try To Mate With Other Males
This is another behavior that I have not observed with male cicadas that I have captured during the molting process. I decided to put both these captured males in the same jar. This was a big mistake because one of the males kept on trying to mate with the second male that I captured.
Unfortunately the aggression of one male trying to mate with the other male stressed the second male so much that it ended up dying shortly after I returned home.
Perhaps the males that I have captured while molting did not fully sexually develop and that is the reason why these males never exhibited this berhavior. In captivity cicadas are very difficult to keep alive longer than 7 to 10 days.
09/30/05 - Unusual Cicada Behavior in Thailand
I stumbled upon a nature article on the internet. It is on how some people in Thailand catch cicadas. It was written in 2002 but I still found it interesting. Apparently every March and April in the jungle, cicadas swarm to a hot spring and drink the mineral-laden water at night.
The people in the village then shine flashlights on them and catch them to eat or sell. Very interesting article. Click the link below.
