Cicada Journals September 1 to September 30, 2005
10/30/05 - The End of the Cicada Season for 2005 In New England :(
Well folks, it's upon us. The end of the Cicada season in our part of the world. Unfortunately, it also seemed to be a short season. If you are just discovering this site, I shall recap the season at a glance and while you read, click on any underlined text for more details:
A Recap of the 2005 Cicada Season
JULY 2005
First Tibicen lyricens Found Today.
07/04/05 - Ah, I remember it like it was yesterday. I had a theory that some species of cicadas would emerge several weeks prior to when the males actually start to sing. Sure enough this proved to be reasonbably true. I found my first Tibicen lyricen cicada tenerals at this time but yet, none were calling in the trees.
Tibicen lyricen Morphology - 101
07/12/05 - Starting with Tibicen lyricen, I decided that this year, I would note some key morphological data for each species of Cicada that I find here not only in Massachusetts but also in New England as a whole. To me when I look at a particular cicada, each has a surprisingly different color pattern which an make identifying them some times dificult. This area of the web site will be added with new data every season so watch these pages grow over time. So far I have morphologies for Tibicen lyricen, Tibicen canicularis and Tibicen chloromera.
Finally hearing Tibicen lyricen Calling.
07/14/05 - This is the first day I heard Tibicen lyricen cicadas calling in the trees. A whole 10 days after I found my first specimen.
First Tibicen canicularis Specimen Found Today.
07/16/05 - My first Tibicen canicularis specimen was found today. This seems to coincide with what happened in 2004. That is, I found specimens of T. lyricen first then T. canicularis next.
Death at Chez Gerry's!!
07/18/05 - Ah, yes, very sad this. All the specimens that I had collected up to this point had all died in the terrarium I had set up for them a few days after I had collected them. I never did figure out what the problem was. Probably a strange outgassing problem within the soil. But yet, I picked up the baton and persevered.
The Cicada Killer Wasps In Westford Massachusetts.
7/21/05 - My first year in finding a colony of these big wasps. The boys at Fairview Cemetery in Westford told me about them so I had to investigate. This ended up being another side project for me.
It was interesting learning about these giant docile wasps and their strange behavior of stinging cicadas and bringing them back to their burrows for Cicada Killer larvae to feed upon. I was fortunate enough to meet Professor Chuck Holliday of Lafayette University who studies these Cicada Killers. I even collected 10 specimens of T. canicularis and T. lyricen cicadas that had been stung by the Cicada Killers. I even filmed a female digging a burrow. Once a Cicada Killer colony likes your property, chances are they will come back every summer.
Professor Holliday is trying to compile a distribution map of all Cicada Killer species here in the United States. There are still areas in New England where data is missing for reporting Cicada Killer distribution. If you want to help out you can check the Cicada Killers web page for more information.
AUGUST 2005
How to Hunt and Catch Cicadas.
08/04/05 - I started getting a ton of email inquiries about the methods that I use to hunt and catch cicadas so I made a page detailing this. While this is only one method, it is the best that I came up with and have been quite successful. Other methods that I used was netting adult specimens which ended up being a lot of fun but catching cicadas during the molt process seems to be the best way that works. It just requires a little patience and dedication.
T. chloromera Heard In My Very Own Back Yard!!
08/10/05 - I couldn't believe that I heard a different species of cicada here in Massachusetts and in my back yard no less, Tibicen chloromera. Prior to this, the only cicadas I ever heard here were Tibicen lyricen and Tibicen canicularis so it was truly exciting. I managed to take a digitial recording of poor quality but it was enough to have John Zyla of Cicadas.info, John Cooley of University of Connecticut at Storrs, Lester Daniels of the Great Lakes Cicadas and David Marshall also of University of Connecticut Storrs confirmed it as well.
Unfortunately, it was only the one male I heard calling over several days and I think ultimately, he got eaten by a bird. Suffice it to say, this was a turning point for me this season because I spent the majority of my free time hunting Tibicen chlormeras in Connecticut.
Another Example of Where Tibicen chloromera ISN'T Supposed to be.
08/12/05 - Reports by William Davis published in 1923 indicated that the northern most range in Connecticut for Tibicen chloromera was in the southwestern part of the state. This ended up however, not being the case. Together with my friend Mike Neckermann in Connecticut, we tracked Tibicen chloromera cicadas very close to the southern Massachusetts border.
We also noted some very strange behaviors with T. chloromera:
- Calling Activity - Male T. chloromeras stop calling for females between 1 and 1:30 pm. This made it very difficult to track them.
- Mating in Captivity - Also we observed male and female cicadas mating in captivity which was a very first for me because cicada specimens I collected as tenerals do not seem to do this. This opened up a serious discussion with others in the entomological community who study cicadas. Things like length of time for sexual development, aggressiveness in females, ovipositing females in captivity and a host of other things which need to be studied in the future.
Sex Education - Determining Gender of Cast off Cicada Skins (Exuvia)
08/17/05 - This year we also learned how to tell the sex of male and female nymphal shells. Those brown husks you see on the sides of tree trunks, bushes buildings and on fences. This will be very useful for me in the future to determine if there is any relation to male cicadas emerging from the ground first vs female cicadas during a season.
Heavy Emergences of T. canicularis in Newton, Ma.
08/21/05 - I got a report that there seemed to be unusually large amounts of Cicadas emerging here so naturally I went to have a look. While I did find a lot of exuvia it really wasn't all that impressive. The reason I'm highlighting this for this season is because I was kicked off the campus at Regis College in the Newton/Wellesley area, which really pissed me off. You can read the details there.
SEPTEMBER 2005
Not too much happened for the month of September because I was quite busy during the beginning of the month re-designing this very web site. However, I did manage to make a few more trips to Connecticut toward the end of the month. I really didn't do much hunting for Cicadas here in Massachusetts because of being so busy with other projects and all my time spent in Connecticut.
I did however during this month manage to capture a few Tibicen lyricens in Connecticut (males) that exhibited some very strange calling behaviors. The two I managed to catch, I put them in the same jar. Since they were both male, I figured it wouldn't be a problem, but unfortunately, one male tried to mate with the other and pretty much killed it in the attempt. This is another behavior of "wild-captured" cicadas that I do not see in cicadas that I collect during their molting process and another area that needs to be studied.
And that's basically that.
The Cicada season is now over, slightly less than three months in a nut shell. I did learn a lot this year but I can't publish EVERYTHING that I have learned because I plan on writing some official papers for the Entomological Society of America. As far as Cicadas go, the season to learn about them is always very short and you have to wait a whole year to learn more.
While the above are just some of the high-points during this season, it surely doesn't mean that they were the only times that I went out and did stuff that was cicada-related. You are encouraged to consult the cicada journals for a blow-by-blow of what went on.
However, that surely doesn't mean that this web site will be idle during that time, far from it. There is still a lot of work I need to do in other areas which I usually work on over the winter. Things like adding links to others web sites, adding more information to other areas like the cicada deformities and cicada behaviors pages plus my friend Kees in New Zealand has promised to report his escapades on his cicada hunts and observations from his country as his cicada season is just getting started!
There will be additional photos and information from there so please stay posted and check back often.
