Pirate's Cove

By this time, everyone knows that two different groups of cicadas are coming out of the ground, right? So, of course, the climate cult has to jump in

For cicadas, it’s safety in numbers. Is climate change throwing off their timing?

A cicada in sync with its brood is a cicada with a chance.

The insects’ synchronized emergence is an evolutionary strategy, scientists say. Birds, raccoons and other predators can eat only so many of them. So the more cicadas emerge together, the better the odds that more will live on to reproduce and pass along their genes.

“They have the safety-in-numbers strategy,” said Chris Simon, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut who studies the insects. (snip)

This summer, the number of periodical cicadas is expected to be extra large, as two broods emerge at the same time. The last time these two emerged together was in 1803. Tens of billions of the insects are predicted to surface. Users of the Cicada Safari app, which is designed to report cicada sightings and help scientists track the insects, have tallied more than 1,000 sightings in Georgia and hundreds in North Carolina and Alabama.

And the next time will be in the 2200’s. BTW, 1803 was during the Little Ice Age.

What’s more, scientists say they’ve noticed some changes in the insects’ rhythms, which has led to hypotheses that rising temperatures may be rewiring the internal clocks of some periodical cicadas.

Gene Kritsky, an entomologist and cicada expert at Mount St. Joseph University in Ohio, said that as average temperatures have climbed higher because of global warming, the dates of emergence have shifted earlier in the calendar year.

“Cicadas are insects of the climate,” he said, adding, “They’re now emerging almost 10 days to two weeks earlier than they did in 1940.”

ZOMG, no!!!! Seriously, big woop. Things get warmer during a Holocene warm period.

Simon has a theory about how climate change may be playing a role: She thinks rising temperatures are lengthening the growing seasons of the plants that cicadas feed on, supercharging the insects’ development underground. That, in turn, may cause many more “stragglers” to emerge early. Eventually, she said, the entire population will adapt and shift timing.

Simon predicted that 17-year cicada broods will shift to become 13-year cicadas. And 13-year cicadas might emerge every nine years.

Will Simon put his/her job and reputation on the line with this prognostication? Anyhow, it’s just another case of the climate cult involving itself in every issue.