Cicada Journals and Archives - August 12 to August 13, 2005
08/12/05 - Another Example of Where Tibicen chloromera ISN'T Supposed to be. - A Great Day In Connecticut!
Yesterday I drove 100 miles down to Columbia Connecticut to hook up with a fellow Cicada freak , Mike Neckermann, to see what there was to see in regards to other Cicada species. Mike has reported that where he grew up as a boy in Wethersfield Connecticut, a suberb of the city of Hartford, there has always been Tibicen chloromera cicadas. Only problem is Wethersfield Connecticut is not known to have the Tibicen chloromera species at all. As indicated in my 8/10/05 update below, Tibicen chloromera's northern-most range has been documented as southwestern Connecticut.
That definately isn't accurate because the city of Hartford is more or less located north and central of the state of Connecticut and and let me tell you, it was teeming with T. chloromera. The calling song of the male T. chloromera in Wethersfield was so loud that it made it the predominant species there. Oh, we heard T. canicularis and T. lyricens calling but their presence was nothing compared to T. chloromera.
We started to track T. chloromera's range and ended up in Bloomfield Connecticut which is north of Hartford and approximately 16 miles from the Massachusetts border near Springfield!
Hey! Where'd They Go!?!?
Unfortunately, Tibicen chloromera males have this strange tendancy of "turning off" between noon and 1:00 pm so we lost track of them just north of Bloomfield along route 189. Our plan next Thursday, August 18th, 2005 is to start from that point and continue north to see how close to Massachusetts we can get. If we can find an established population of T. chloromera in Massachusetts that will truly be one for the record books. So stay posted.
But I tell ya, I'm getting a bit antsy now!! I might not be able to wait til next Thursday! I think that I'll start tomorrow in Springfield, Ma. and stay along the Connecticut River and head south into Connecticut and start from that end.
I plan on putting up another page in regards to my trip yesterday to Connecticut outlining where Mike and I went and what we did. This will be a new page for the "Away Missions" section so stay posted.
For
now below are a few pics of 3 Tibicen chloromera specimens that
we collected at Wethersfield High School. Mike, with his fancy net, managed
to collect one male and two female T. chloromera. Funny thing about
the male though. He was calling on the ground in front of some dense foliage.
The reason he was on the ground was because his wing was damaged and couldn't
fly. He no doubt managed to escape a predator, probably a bird. In retrospect
I would've liked to have gotten some video of him calling on the ground
but Mike just grabbed him with the net and I was too excited to stop him.
One Virile Male T. chloromera!
We put him in a jar with the two other female specimens. Later on when we were driving I started to hear some racket in the back seat. The male was squawking for a bit and when I took the jar out and had a look inside I saw that the male was mating with one of the females! This is truely a first for me because I have never witnessed in my entire life Tibicen cicadas mating in captivity before.
They
stayed locked together for well over an hour. In the meantime, I noticed
that the other T. chloromera female (you know what they say about
being a "third wheel") seemed to me to be trying to mate with
one of the exuvia that I had collected and also had in the same jar. Note
the picture to the left. I had plenty of sticks for them to perch on but
all three were in the bottom of the jar even the female that wasn't mating
with the male. I removed the sticks in order to take the picture to the
left. The cicada to the extreme left is of the female trying to mate with
the exuvia, the cicada at the top is of the female, the cicada at the bottom
is of the male.
I so wished I was watching these cicadas after I put them in the jar. I wanted to see who persued who in order to mate. But alas, i wasn't expecting any hanky-panky to be going on in the jar so I missed it.
Interesting On-The-Road Experiment
I
took the female that was trying to mate with the exuvia out of the jar and
transferred her to a separate jar. I wanted to see what would happen to
the male when he finished mating with the first female. When he finished
with the first female, I transferred him to the second jar with the unmated
female. Sure enough, he was still "good-to-go" and proceeded to
mate with her. Though this second time, he only mated with the second female
for about half an hour.
Shortly thereafter the second female died while on the ride home back to Massachusetts and the male died an hour or two after I got home. Which is something I don't quite understand and will have to ask questions about. I was under the impression that males die shortly after mating then the females live a few days longer. Long enough to lay their eggs in a branch of a tree then they die shortly after that. Maybe it was because they were in the jar all day long that put undue stress on them.
Though I did create the conditions to notice this unusual behavior this male should consider himself extremely lucky. After all, he couldn't fly so his range was pretty limited, it would've been doubtful that he could've successfully mated with a female in the wild before he was preyed upon by a ground predator. In this way, he got to mate with two females instead of just one before he died. Maybe with all the excitement his heart just gave out.
Look for an indepth report with tons more sound and pic files in a day or two.
08/13/05 - Tibicen chloromera in Massachusetts - NOT!!
Other than finding that rogue T. chloromera in my back yard on August 10, 2005 calling in the trees, I have been unsuccessful in finding T. chloromera cicadas in Massachusetts. As mentioned yesterday I was thinking about trying to track T. chloromera's northern most range to see if it can be heard here. Well at least along the southern border between Masachusetts and Connecticut anyway.
But alas, I didn't find evidence of them calling here in Massachusetts. I spent the whole day in the southern part of Massachusetts driving along Route 20 heading west. I then hooked up with Route 19 and headed south into Connecticut then continued west on Route 190. I stopped several places in Connecticut like Somers, Somersville and Hazardville. Then I crossed the Connecticut River and started heading north back into Massachusetts.
I
went as far west as Agawam Mass and stopped at a cemetery to check for exuvia.
I did find many. There was an unusual exit hole no doubt from a cicada just
under a pine tree. This hole is approximately 3/8 inch in diameter. What
is unusual about this exit hole is the different colored - almost blonde
colored - soil all around the hole. Compare it to the rest of the soil outside
this blonde area.
This is indicative of Magicicadas making turrets and kind of "frothing up" the soil around their exit holes. I documented this when I went to West Viriginia earlier this year to investigate Brood X Magicicada stragglers.
I started to head east again and went through Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Monson, Wales and Palmer, Mass. Stopping every so often along the way. I found many signs of exuvia in these towns, Mostly T. lyricen and T. canicularis which was heard everywhere I went. The range of these two species is quite extensive.
A Discovery In Hazardville Connecticut
One
of the places I went in Connecticut was the Hazardville Cemetery. I did
find some rather exceptionally large exuvia. Now these looked to me to be
T. chloromera but I was there at a time when T. chloromera
does not sing during the day. So it is anyone's guess as to which species
these two exuvia come from. I do indeed still have them however, maybe someone
someday will be able to tell me.
This area does look promising for T. chloromera because of its close proximity to the Connecticut River. I may have to venture here to Hazardville with Mike this Thursday for another look.
On another note, I did manage to find a T. canicularis molting at around 1:30 pm. As I mention in the section of this web site on How To Hunt Cicadas, this proves that you can hunt for them at any time. Click the thumbnails below to enlarge.
