Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
Parts of Indiana and Illinois will host a natural event this spring that last occurred in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president. Two separate broods of cicadas — the 17-year Brood XIII and 13-year Brood XIX — will emerge in the same year.
“The majority of them for Brood XIX are going to emerge in southwest Indiana, the very far southwest corner of the state,” said Vince Burkle, the Fort Wayne-based assistant director and survey coordinator of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Entomology and Plant Pathology. “And then you have Brood XIII, which will emerge up around Lake Michigan, around the Indiana Dunes and back up into Chicago.
“So over here in the Fort Wayne area, or any other part of Indiana, we will not see any of these emergences of these two broods,” Burkle told The Journal Gazette.
The black-bodied insects crawl out of the ground from around late May to June to reproduce. There are more than 3,000 cicada species worldwide, according to Purdue University. Three species make up Brood XIII, and four are a part of Brood XIX.
Cicadas’ loud buzz can be a noisy nuisance to residents of rural and suburban areas. Last week in Newberry, South Carolina, emerging cicadas were so loud that residents were calling the sheriff’s department asking why they were hearing a loud roar.
Male cicadas use tymbals, drum-like structures on their abdomen, to create a high-pitched buzz to attract females, which respond with a quick rub of their wings. The mating call and response sounds like the whine of electrical wires and can reach 80 to 120 decibels when at close range.
For perspective, leaf blowers, rock concerts and large sporting events generate 110 to 120 decibels. Sounds above 85 decibels can result in hearing damage or loss, depending on the duration of exposure, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Cicadas might look scary, with their red eyes, large wings and prickly feet, but they don’t sting, carry disease or bite, according to Purdue entomologist Elizabeth Barnes. But people hiking in the wooded areas of Jasper, Newton, Posey and Warrick counties in southwest Indiana, and folks in Lake, LaPorte and Porter counties in the northwest, might want to follow the lead of entomologists.
Scientists who study cicadas often wear earmuffs or earplugs in such areas to protect their hearing.
