So — here in Maryland, the cicadas are out in full force everywhere you go, pretty much all day long. They’re loud enough to drown out outdoor conversations, if you don’t speak up a little. And, their forlorn little corpses are starting to crunch underfoot if you don’t look where you’re walking. God knows what delights of the senses await us when they all die off en masse.
Articles I read earlier, before the insects hatched, said there would be “billions” of the little buggers. I certainly have no trouble believing such a figure. Perhaps someone has a more precise estimate though, now that they’ve actually arrived? How many billions could there be?
No need for an exact census. Six significant digits will suffice. In a pinch, one or two.
Some other questions just struck me:
[ol]
[li]Are the dead cicadas I see the ones that have already mated, or are they more likely dead from starvation?[/li][li]What do they eat, anyway? [/li][li]What portion of the eggs they’re busy laying will survive until the next hatching, 17 years from now?[/li][li]Are long-period cicadas indigenous to North America? Do they live elsewhere in the world?[/li][/ol]
Thanks to any and all who respond.
When they die off en masse, they smell like rotten uncooked chicken. Very nasty. The streets are slick with their corpses in my part of Silver Spring, MD. Come by and have a sniff.
Around here most of the dead ones either ran out of fuel or got run over by cars.
Hi Opal! The adults don’t eat anything. They did all their eating in the larval stage.
Hopefully none.
Yes. If someone did import them, their grave should be dug up and their bones reburried in a cess pool.
I was thinking you could get a very rough estimate by counting things like
(1) number of cicadas smashed by a Metro train on one run. This number, divided by the cross-sectional area of a Metro train multiplied by the length of the run, would give you a volumetric estimate of how many cicadas there are. If you assume they never fly higher than 5 meters off the ground (or that their density drops off sharply above a known height) then you can multiply by the number of square miles they cover to get an order of magnitude estimate.
(2) number of cicadas found dead on a sidewalk tile of known size. Take samples from all over the city, make a note if a live cicada flies through your tile’s “airspace” while you’re counting, and you get a ground coverage estimate.
(3) volume of cicada song at noon, measured from different neighborhoods. Assuming standard atmospheric acoustics and a uniform distribution of (all-singing) cicadas, and knowing the maximum volume that any one cicada can sing at, you should be able to measure the local point volume and figure out how many cicadas there are, maximum, within a mile radius of you. A few samples around your neighborhood can help you triangulate. The density measurement you get will be very rough, but again, order of magnitude is the key.
