re: Cicadas are outta control

I haven’t seen any here in Charleston.

Same. Nashville is being terrorized by these lil shits but my kids are obsessed with catching them.

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Yeah, they can be eaten. I've never partook in such, though

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I looked at uncle Tony like he was nuts And later, swear to God, we shared smoked bobcat white meat. And it was devine. I may need to edit this

Haven't heard one in Oxford. I hear they are bad in East MS near Alabama though

Jon Cicada fans? Best music at the dentists office.

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Naw, they play an important role in soil fertility. These broods are large enough that their die off legitimately alters the ecosystem in a beneficial way.

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Their periodical emergence is interesting, and is still being studied by quite a few folks. The emergence on 13 and 17 year intervals isn't a happy accident. The fact that emergence of all periodcal cicadas occurs at specific intervals that are prime numbers is an important evolutionary development.

It has to do with predator availability. Most things in nature, especially breeding patterns and life expectancy, exist in a timeframe that revolves around even numbers. Predator satiation is why cicadas have evolved to emerge in such huge numbers. Their goal is to beat predation with shear numbers, predators just can't eat them all. That approach wouldn't work, however, if their emergence coincided with predictable population booms within predator species. It all comes down to the lifespan and mating habits of the predator species. By emerging on prime number years that don't coincide with population booms of predator species cicadas have evolved to center the mating aspect of their own lifecycles on times when the overall number of predator species is at their lowest in overall population.

Thanks for that!!

None in NW Arkansas

Cicadas - the only thing that hasn’t invaded Texas .




Yet

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They don’t seem any worse than any other year down here in Baldwin County.

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The farthest South AL observation on iNaturalist is from Thomasville over to Greenville. In MS it is from Jackson over to Meridian with just a few south of there.