0:12

Okay , so welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast

0:15

. I'm your host , Dr Diane , and this

0:17

week and next I have a special co-host

0:20

. I have Lynn Warre-Colds

0:22

back on the show with me and

0:24

we are going to be talking all things cicada

0:26

. This week's guest is

0:29

the Indiana Jones of the insect

0:31

world , Dr Gene Kritsky

0:33

, and he's here because Lynn

0:35

discovered him and wanted

0:38

us to talk to him . So , Lynn , what are the things

0:40

that made you want to invite Dr K on

0:42

to the show ?

0:43

Well , first of all , I've

0:45

been obsessed with cicadas since I was a little

0:48

girl , growing up in Florida and

0:50

catching them . But his interest

0:52

, his research interest , is in the evolution

0:55

and distribution of periodical cicadas

0:57

, and so those are the ones that come out

0:59

every 13 years or every 19

1:02

years or every seven years . And

1:04

if that wasn't enough

1:06

, his expertise in that area . This

1:10

professor is also interested

1:12

in entomology of ancient Egypt

1:14

and has done research in this area

1:16

and Darwin's Charles

1:18

Darwin's interest in insects . So just

1:20

a real interesting natural history

1:23

perspective and a

1:25

volume of information about

1:27

cicadas .

1:28

Well , let's bring him on . I can't wait

1:30

to learn everything there is to know about cicadas

1:33

as we get ready for this incredible convergence

1:36

this year . We have a

1:38

super special cicada treat for

1:40

you today . We have to Wonder

1:43

Curiosity Connection . Where

1:45

will your adventures take you ? I'm

1:48

Dr Diane , and thank you for joining me

1:50

on today's episode of Adventures

1:52

in Learning . We

1:56

have Dr Gene Kritsky with us and

1:59

he is the cicada expert

2:01

. He is an

2:03

let me see if I've got this right an archaeological

2:06

entomologist . Did I get that right

2:08

?

2:09

Well , I guess you could say oh , I'm more a pure

2:11

entomologist , but I've published books on ancient Egypt

2:13

. In fact , I lived in Egypt for a full

2:15

year .

2:16

Well , when I read that , I got to tell you I was imagining

2:19

Indiana Jones chasing after cicadas

2:21

.

2:23

In his case I could see , instead of being snakes , it'd

2:25

be cicadas , exactly

2:27

.

2:28

Well , we are so thrilled that you were able to

2:30

take some time to talk to us today about

2:33

cicadas and the convergence , and

2:35

maybe let's just start with . Why

2:37

are cicadas special ?

2:40

Well , we're talking primarily about the periodical cicadas

2:42

. There are 3,400 species

2:44

of cicadas in the world , of which there

2:47

are seven in the eastern US

2:49

. That are periodical cicadas , and they're

2:51

called that because every 17 or

2:53

13 years they come out in massive

2:55

numbers , and

2:58

that's in part to overwhelm their

3:00

predators , so that predators can eat

3:02

and eat , and eat , eat

3:04

some more , get

3:07

sick of them , and there are still millions left

3:09

, and that

3:12

phenomenon was observed by the pilgrims

3:15

in 1634 . And

3:17

when there was a major study of the taxonomy

3:20

of cicadas , the

3:22

researcher decided there's something really magic about

3:24

these insects , and so their official

3:26

generic name is

3:28

Magisicata .

3:31

I love that . They really are magical

3:33

.

3:38

They are a once-in-a-generation phenomena for

3:40

various parts of the eastern US and

3:43

they make memories for the little kids that

3:46

17 years later , which is almost the full generation

3:49

, I had a woman back in

3:51

1987 call me

3:53

and she told me that she remembered vividly

3:55

playing with her brother during the 1936

3:58

emergence of Brew 10 . And a

4:00

cicada landed on his nose and she knocked

4:02

it off with a baseball bat . Oh no , breaking

4:04

his nose , and she knocked it off with a baseball bat , oh no , breaking his nose

4:06

. And so 17 years

4:08

later she

4:11

has her own daughter and she's taking

4:13

her daughter out and telling her this story and talking

4:15

about cicadas . 34 years later

4:17

she's got a granddaughter taking the granddaughter

4:20

, sharing the stories of cicadas and I'm

4:22

sad to say I don't believe she's still with us anymore

4:24

, but I'll hope the stories still are in

4:26

the family .

4:27

I do too .

4:29

Go ahead . One

4:36

of the many activities on Cicada Safari is oral history and all different ways

4:38

. One of the things we're trying to do and we want to ask you about is how do we make this

4:40

real to our students and to children

4:42

and how can they participate and

4:45

how can they get involved ? And even

4:47

if they're not going to be where a periodic

4:49

cicada comes out , they

4:52

could be in Florida where cicadas come out every year

4:54

and what are some things that they could do to be

4:56

involved ?

4:57

Sure . Well , the first thing

4:59

for people who don't live in the area maybe

5:03

your grandparents do it , I don't know but the first thing people can do , even if they don't

5:05

live in the area maybe your grandparents do it , I don't know but the first thing people

5:07

can do , even if they don't live in the

5:10

region of Brood 13 or

5:12

Brood 19 , is to get the free app

5:14

Cicada Safari , which is

5:17

an app I helped develop , primarily

5:19

for crowdsourcing periodical cicadas

5:21

and , even though they won't have any periodical cicadas

5:24

to to monitor where they are , they

5:26

can follow it live , because

5:28

as soon as somebody sees a periodical cicada

5:30

, they take their iphone or their droid and

5:33

they have their location services or gps turned

5:35

on and take that picture . They hit this little

5:37

paper airplane icon at the bottom . It

5:39

sends us to it , sends it to the app

5:41

and we have right

5:43

now , real humans looking

5:46

at these pictures to verify that

5:48

it's a periodical skate although we are actively

5:51

trying to find a sponsor for

5:53

this to apply artificial intelligence

5:55

to the identification , because

5:58

in 2021 , we

6:00

received 561,000

6:03

plus photographs .

6:07

That's a lot of photos we received 561,000

6:09

plus photographs .

6:10

Wow , that's a lot of photos . That's a lot of photos . We

6:15

had a team of 22 people looking at photographs and we got them done . We got

6:17

them done within a . We tried to stay as close as we could

6:19

on time , but there were days that we

6:21

would have we'd identify overview

6:23

over 20,000 photographs in a , only

6:25

to have 32,000 submitted that day .

6:28

That's fascinating .

6:30

Wow . So what are some other

6:32

activities that students could get

6:34

involved with besides taking

6:37

?

6:37

pictures Also if

6:40

they're not living in the area . If you go to cicadasafariorg

6:43

, the website that supports , you can get the instructions

6:45

on how to fold an origami cicada

6:47

. That back

6:49

in 2021 , I think about 8,000

6:51

to 9,000 kids in Dayton Ohio

6:54

made origami cicadas . It's large enough

6:56

to be its own emergence , if you will .

6:57

Wow , I love that idea .

7:00

For the younger kids we got a

7:02

periodical cicada they can color . For the

7:04

younger kids we've got a periodical skater they can color

7:06

. But if you are a little more computer savvy you

7:09

can get online to Chronicling

7:12

America , which is a Library of Congress

7:14

free site . They've been digitizing newspapers

7:16

from 1777 , all the way to 1963

7:19

. And they can look up newspaper

7:24

articles going back in time , pick

7:27

a year for a particular brood oh , that's

7:29

cool and see what's there . But

7:31

they got to remember when they got back to the 19th century

7:33

and into the 1800s . Don't call them cicadas

7:36

, call them locusts .

7:37

Right .

7:38

Because they were incorrectly called locusts . Up to that time

7:40

, and by the late 1800s , there

7:44

were a lot of people saying they really are cicadas

7:46

but

7:51

they still call them locusts .

7:52

Well , one thing I think is fascinating about the science is it's been what 150

7:54

years ago when they were observed ? But we're

7:56

just , you know , 150 years later

7:59

. We're just starting to understand the periodic

8:01

nature and I mean it's a lot

8:03

of people , a lot of eyes observing

8:05

, a lot of thought to that . And

8:08

I admit to having

8:10

been reading your book

8:12

, which I recommend to anyone , diane will

8:14

put that up in

8:16

the notes for the podcast . But

8:18

cicadas , handy

8:22

reference . Here I learned several things and

8:25

I I thought I thought I knew a

8:27

lot um the um

8:29

with with the earth , with , I

8:31

mean cicadas , being

8:34

the idea of cicadas being negative

8:36

, that they predict war , they predict

8:38

plague , that they , uh , harm

8:41

trees , that they harm the

8:43

environment , um , could you talk a little bit

8:45

about why that's not the case

8:47

?

8:49

All that started . A lot of that information

8:51

started from when they first

8:53

emerged , back in 1634

8:55

in Massachusetts with the Pilgrims by

8:57

1715 , when Brood X emerged

9:00

in Philadelphia . That's the oldest historic record of Brood

9:03

X in Philadelphia

9:05

and that's the oldest historic record of Brood X . Reverend

9:08

Sandell wrote that these

9:16

strange insects came out . The Swedes call them grasshopper , but the English call them

9:18

locusts . That goes back even before that , In 1699

9:21

, a man by the name of Paul Dudley living in Massachusetts

9:24

and observing Brood XI . He

9:27

didn't know what to make of these things , and

9:30

so he asked a friend of his , Reverend Weld

9:32

, who turned

9:34

to the King James Version of the Bible , to figure

9:36

out what they were . And of course they

9:40

knew the indigenous populations in

9:42

New England were eating cicadas . John

9:45

the Baptist ate locusts . They

9:48

came out in big . These insects come out in big

9:50

numbers as periodical cicadas , and there

9:52

were plagues of locusts in Exodus , and

9:54

so they started putting together all these little

9:56

pieces . So therefore they must be locusts

9:59

and that's where the name came from

10:01

. It was an effort

10:03

to understand what was going on . That's

10:06

where the name came from . Uh , as an effort

10:08

to understand what was going on . Interestingly enough , when paul dudley uh wrote

10:10

up his findings and uh , in 1699 he experienced an

10:12

emergence . 1716 he experienced

10:15

it again . Uh , and then he

10:17

waited another 17 years to make sure

10:19

he was right . Make

10:22

sure , and so he wrote this

10:24

paper up and sent it to the Royal Society in

10:26

London . And they got

10:28

. While his paper was being read , people

10:31

started objecting , saying he has confused

10:33

cicadas for locusts . So

10:37

rather than immediately publishing the paper

10:39

, they wrote him a letter and he said

10:41

oh no , I've got this on firm authority . I've

10:43

seen a transcript of this letter . I've got this on firm authority . I've seen a transcript of this letter . I've got this on firm

10:45

authority that

10:47

these are locusts from Reverend Weld . So

10:50

what the Royal Society did

10:52

was they arranged for some

10:55

Egyptian locusts in

10:59

Cairo to be mailed to Paul

11:01

Dudley in Massachusetts in 1734

11:05

.

11:06

Wow .

11:07

They got there .

11:10

That's even more amazing .

11:11

That's even more amazing . We're

11:14

not the same . He went

11:16

back and he said you are right , I have

11:18

fixed up locusts for cicadas

11:21

. But then said I don't think you'll ever excuse the fact that the common man here in

11:23

North America is going to continue to call them locusts for cicadas . But then said I don't think you'll ever excuse the fact

11:25

that the common man here in North America

11:27

is going to continue to call them locusts . Sure

11:30

, and they did . They did for another couple

11:32

hundred years and then finally , I'd say in

11:35

the 20th century , starting in the

11:38

middle of the century , especially

11:40

with the work of the United States Department of Agriculture , we

11:42

really got the word across that these were

11:44

not locusts , and I think the

11:46

last time somebody referred to them as locusts I won't name

11:49

the university because it's

11:51

not what I attended , but they

11:54

referred to cicadas as relatives of crickets

11:56

.

11:57

Oh no , oh no .

11:59

They are not . Cicadas are more closely

12:01

related to aphids than they are to crickets

12:04

.

12:04

Interesting , interesting

12:11

, interesting . So my understanding growing up was that periodical cicadas were native

12:14

to North America , but I just read in your book that there are some

12:16

in other places in the world . Is

12:18

that a relatively new discovery ?

12:21

It's been in the last 20 , 30 years or so . But

12:23

even though there are periodical cicadas

12:25

elsewhere , they're not in the cicada

12:28

family . They're not even closely related

12:30

to our cicadas .

12:31

Okay .

12:32

So the Magis cicada , the periodical

12:34

cicadas that we have , are endemic

12:36

or unique to the eastern United States . They're

12:38

as unique to the eastern US as giraffes

12:40

are to Africa . Excellent and the

12:44

other two cicadas one's in Fiji , it

12:46

has an eight-year life cycle and the other

12:48

one is in India , it has a four-year life cycle

12:50

, and until COVID , that

12:53

always emerged at

12:55

the same time as the world cup , the

12:58

world cup cicada . But they delayed the world

13:01

cup a year because of the COVID

13:03

pandemic . So now it's out of sync with , but

13:08

they don't . They look very different

13:11

from our cicadas , they're in a totally different genus

13:13

and and not even closely related

13:15

at all . Okay , and we still have , we still have .

13:16

Yeah , they're in the family cicadity , so they look like a cicada closely related at all

13:18

, we still have the terrain .

13:19

They're in the family Cicadidae , so

13:21

they look like a cicada , but the coloration

13:24

is very different , the life cycle is very different , and so on

13:26

.

13:29

So if we wanted to take our own North American safari and go see as close as we could

13:31

to this double brood emergence

13:34

, where and when should we travel

13:36

to go ?

13:37

Well , where

13:40

and when it's going to the first

13:42

, if you want to start with chronologically , they will

13:44

start emerging , probably the

13:46

last week of April , in northern

13:49

Georgia , northern Alabama , northern

13:51

Mississippi and northern Louisiana

13:53

. Then

13:56

, as , and of course the trigger for that

13:58

is the soil must get to 64 degrees fahrenheit

14:00

, and just when that hits doesn't mean

14:02

they're all going to come out that night . Uh , I've

14:05

I've discovered in my 50 years working on cicadas

14:07

that they really like a nice rain

14:09

to sort of soften the world a little bit

14:12

, and it makes it a lot easier . Uh

14:14

, that's where you

14:16

start with the with late , of course . We're having a very

14:19

warm spring here in the Midwest and

14:21

we had a warm spring here in 2021

14:26

. And the cicadas still came out in

14:28

mid-May , right outside the window where

14:31

I'm sitting , in fact . But

14:33

as the spring progresses

14:35

and it warms and

14:38

the summer's approaching , the first

14:40

week of May , you'll probably see them around southern

14:44

Tennessee , probably from Nashville over through

14:46

Chattanooga and what have you ? Then , as you go into

14:48

the second week of May

14:51

, they'll probably start merging in Kentucky

14:53

and parts

14:56

of northern Arkansas and then southern Missouri

14:58

. Probably by the third week in May

15:01

, they should be coming out in good numbers

15:03

in southern Illinois , southern Missouri

15:06

. In the east side there's

15:09

a band through the middle of North

15:11

Carolina and a few pockets of them in Virginia

15:13

. But

15:16

now we're approaching the end of

15:18

May and , uh , you're going to see

15:20

them coming out northern illinois , the chicago

15:22

, greater chicago area and then

15:24

probably shortly thereafter

15:26

it'll be southern wisconsin , eastern

15:28

iowa as well all right excellent

15:31

so that's what , that's when , where

15:34

yes the where

15:36

depends on where you are in the world and if you have

15:38

cicada safari . If you have a cicada

15:40

safari , you can watch the map live

15:42

as people report . But things are are

15:45

verified , their photos are verified . You'll see these

15:47

little cicada icons popping up all

15:49

over the map and you can actually zoom in

15:51

like right , get right down to the street . That's

15:54

how we tested cicada saf Safari . We

15:57

had it ready for Brood 8 and Brood 9 . And

16:00

so , using Cicada Safari , we

16:04

drove to Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania and

16:06

Northern West Virginia and we had streets and we

16:08

drove right to that street . That was what

16:11

we did with Brood 8 . Brood 9 , we went down

16:13

to North Carolina and we picked out spots

16:15

like okay , well , let's check here . And they were there

16:17

. And what

16:20

was interesting about the year 2020 was

16:22

that , in addition to brood 9 , we had

16:24

four other broods emerge

16:27

off cycle and very small numbers

16:29

. But one of them was

16:31

in raleigh , durham , which was a four-year early

16:33

brood 19 cicada and

16:36

we , uh , had records

16:38

of where they were and we we got there . We didn't hear anything

16:41

. We didn't see any adult cicada , but

16:43

we found all the skins right

16:46

because all the adults were eaten by predators right

16:48

, because there weren't enough and so uh

16:51

, but that knowledge you could actually fall aware and

16:53

so , depending on where you are in the world

16:55

, if you are close to one of these states or or

16:58

what have you on the outside , you

17:00

can then monitor when's the best time for me to

17:02

drive the shortest distance to see these

17:04

, and you can zero it pretty quickly

17:06

. That was very different than what we I had to do

17:08

back in 1976 when

17:10

I first mapped out brood 23 in illinois

17:13

. You would drive and

17:15

not hear . That also here you've heard them , and so

17:17

you stop , and then you drive some more

17:19

and you can actually pick

17:23

them up at 60 miles an hour and know when to

17:25

stop . But you were just basically driving

17:28

blind until you heard the calls .

17:31

That sounds like such an adventure , absolutely

17:34

.

17:35

So I have a question for you . How

17:38

did you fall in love with cicadas and

17:40

other insects ? What drew you to that field

17:42

?

17:43

Okay , well , it's a little

17:45

bit of a roundabout story , but it's

17:48

something that I think there's a little . I tell my students there's

17:50

a lesson here for everybody . I

17:52

started in the University in Bloomington

17:54

as a bioanthropology

17:57

major , very

17:59

interested in human evolution and

18:01

in my human paleontology course

18:03

and this is the 1972

18:05

, so there's not a lot of fossils like we have now

18:08

. We've got more stuff . So we had this , you

18:10

know one . I remember holding these two skulls and saying

18:12

to Professor Paul Jameson , who

18:14

is still alive , and I talk with him via

18:17

email all the time how do you know ? These

18:19

are the know , these aren't just the male and the female of

18:21

each other as opposed to two different species . And

18:23

he starts going on about morphometric analysis

18:26

, doing all these measurements , putting it in a computer , and then

18:28

he said you might want to take an anthropology

18:30

class because that's where they're doing that stuff

18:33

, that's where they're working that out . Didn't think of

18:35

it . So I went to register

18:37

for classes and in those days

18:39

we would go into a big field

18:41

house and collect computer cards of

18:44

all the classes , and

18:46

so the seniors register

18:48

first , and the freshmen , then the juniors

18:51

and then the sophomores I

18:55

was a sophomore and then in the class there

18:57

was a random cohort of

18:59

what alphabetical letters go .

19:04

And the K's were the last of the last .

19:06

And I walked up to the table . I remember saying

19:08

this is one of those events where you look back on it to change

19:10

your life . I said I need five hours . Is there

19:12

anything open ? And this , this

19:15

woman , says to me I'm sorry , All

19:21

I have is entomology in the lab . And I thought , well , I might

19:23

as well take it because it may fit my human evolution

19:26

. It was taught

19:28

by Frank Young , who was the periodical

19:31

cicada specialist in Indiana , and

19:34

the second week of class he

19:36

starts talking about these periodical cicadas

19:38

and I changed my major that week .

19:41

Wow , love it .

19:42

And what I tell my students is don't

19:44

get upset when you don't get what you thought you

19:47

wanted to have . It's the serendipity

19:49

that can lead to your career . And so

19:51

I just went . Oh

19:53

, and I ended up being

19:55

Frank's undergraduate teaching intern

19:58

. I took entomology

20:00

, I was a teaching assistant in parasitology . He

20:03

and I have written a book together . Now , in its third edition

20:05

, he's passed away , sadly

20:08

. Many , many years ago we

20:14

wrote several papers together and

20:16

it was weird because he was a US Army Medical Reserve

20:18

. I was a long-haired guy , anti-war , and we hit it off

20:20

right from the beginning . And

20:23

when he passed I remember

20:25

before he retired I remember him

20:27

calling me and said I need your help . Can you come over and

20:29

see me ? And so I drove

20:31

to Bloomington from Cincinnati

20:33

and he said I want to

20:35

give you my teaching library because I'm going to retire

20:37

. And I thought okay , that

20:39

was 62 cartons of books .

20:42

Oh my .

20:46

So . But what hit me in his

20:48

class was in

20:52

talking about these insects I realized that there

20:55

could be a lot of historical records that might

20:57

be important . And I'm a frustrated historian

20:59

. I love human evolution

21:01

, I love archaeology and antiquity

21:03

and so on . So

21:05

I just sort of thought I'll bet there's some

21:07

data that you can get by looking at historical

21:09

records . So graduate from Indiana

21:12

, I go to the University of Illinois where I'm working with the

21:14

Lou Standard who was the Illinois

21:16

specialist on periodical cicadas . I didn't

21:18

do my thesis on periodical cicadas , I

21:21

did it on a relative , but I did while I was

21:23

there in his lab , map Out Brew

21:25

23 . And in

21:27

my spare time I looked up for historical

21:29

records and by the time I graduated

21:32

with my doctorate I had over 7,000

21:34

historic records of periodical cicadas .

21:36

Wow .

21:37

Now what do you do with the stock ? And

21:40

then Steve Jobs comes

21:42

to the rescue with

21:44

the Macintosh and somebody I don't

21:46

know who came out with a computer program that

21:49

was designed to be a marketing tool about where

21:51

to put golf courses . And

21:54

why I was interested in that software was

21:56

it had a mapping program . Oh

21:59

, I see it now , I can put all my records

22:01

to FIPC codes

22:03

, which is a way and I could put

22:05

them in here by year and I could give

22:07

the program . I could ask the program all right , give me a

22:09

map of all the records of these years

22:12

. I would pick all the collective years for brood one

22:14

, brood two , brood three and so on , and

22:16

I was printing out these maps on dot

22:18

matrix printers brood

22:22

, three and so on and I was printing out these maps on dot matrix printers

22:24

very creative and I saw patterns and that's that's why my folk , my research

22:26

, focuses on on the distribution and

22:28

the relationship with broods to one another , and

22:30

there are there's obvious patterns . For example

22:33

, if you've got a location , like we have here in sinseg

22:35

, where there's two broods , they're

22:37

usually adjacent to each other and they're four years apart

22:39

, and so you could see

22:41

these patterns and that's that's

22:44

how I got hooked , that's

22:46

so cool . And

22:48

, uh , you know , it's all you know . I remember . I do remember

22:50

as a kid , uh , collecting a large stag beetle

22:52

when I was growing up in Florida . I

22:54

remember , uh , uh , uh uh

22:57

, farrell County of bee , a Farrell County

22:59

of honeybees , had made some honeycomb

23:01

in a protected area in this tree and I walked home

23:03

and the comb was all over the ground

23:05

. Bees were flying all over the place . So I

23:08

remember yeah , I'm a nerd I took

23:10

my chemistry set test tubes and

23:13

I put pupae in these test tubes in an

23:15

old rack and watched

23:17

them develop . And then I'm taking some to my biology

23:19

. I was in biology at my senior high school and

23:23

I took them in there and Mrs Ferguson

23:25

, my biology teacher , asked

23:28

if she could put them in the display windows . The next thing , oh

23:30

, there's these , my bees are in the window , and

23:32

it just goes all up there . But anyway so

23:34

that's my interest in insects . I always had an interest

23:36

in insects . But

23:44

more .

23:44

I'd say I was more interested in natural history . I loved insects , I loved fossils , that

23:46

type of thing . When I love the way you've brought them all together to create just an amazing

23:49

career , it sounds like you're doing something

23:51

that's your passion and it comes

23:53

through so clearly .

23:55

Well , I do enjoy it and

23:57

I have enjoyed it . I just retired , back in June , but I'm

23:59

still teaching , I'm still writing books

24:01

. My six-volume

24:04

series I edited on the cultural history

24:06

of insects was just published , in January

24:09

, and that's a series

24:11

of six volumes , each one divided by time antiquity

24:13

, middle Ages , renaissance , enlightenment

24:16

, industrial Revolution and modern . There's

24:19

eight chapters in each book and the

24:21

chapter subjects are the same for

24:23

each book . So if you're interested in insects and art throughout

24:25

human history , you can read Chapter 8 in all six volumes

24:27

. If you're interested in how insects influence

24:30

the world of antiquity , you can read Volume

24:32

1 .

24:33

Wow , Well , I'm a nerd so I know

24:36

I'm running out to get that . And Lynn

24:38

don't bother because I'm getting it for your birthday

24:40

.

24:42

Lynn , she must really like you , because the six

24:44

sets sells for 550 bucks .

24:48

You'll be waiting . You'll get one at a time

24:50

, one at a time . So

24:54

I'm curious , as you've been

24:56

doing all of sort of your research and

24:58

focused on cicadas , what

25:02

is the single weirdest

25:04

fact or single weirdest thing

25:06

you've discovered about the cicada ?

25:09

Well , I would know . Yeah

25:11

, there are two things I'll put in there . One

25:13

because of my . I was

25:15

in 1999

25:18

at the National Entomology Meetings . I predicted

25:20

that the following year would be a four-year acceleration

25:22

of brood 10 . And no

25:24

one had ever done that before . And

25:27

it happened . Massive

25:29

numbers emerged in Cincinnati and in Washington

25:31

and other places . They

25:33

came out , such numbers that they actually survived

25:36

predation . They sang , they

25:38

mated , they laid their eggs and the eggs

25:40

hatched . That was the first time that we've

25:43

ever seen an off cycle Emergence

25:47

survive . And

25:49

that all happened because nine

25:51

years earlier you got to be patient to

25:53

study sick age . I

25:56

was teaching ecology and I

25:58

was also department chair . And I'm walking down the hall

26:00

and realizing I forgot I had

26:02

a lab today and I've not prepared anything . So

26:05

what's the first lab in your , in your

26:07

, in a science course ? It's the scientific

26:09

method . So I pulled

26:11

out the paper by Monte Lloyd and Joanne White

26:13

on impairing the growth rates of 17 , 13

26:15

year cicadas . I had the students read

26:17

this paper and I told them . I said now

26:20

, if you were to go to dig up cicadas today , and

26:22

we were in a brood , 10 to 17-year cicada

26:24

area four years after the eggs were laid

26:26

. What stage should they be in ? I

26:28

had them write that prediction on a piece of paper

26:30

. They put it in an envelope . They sealed

26:32

the envelope . They signed the seal . We put all of

26:35

them together in another and tied it all

26:37

up , went down to the maintenance

26:39

at the university , got shovels and went

26:41

over to the orchard to dig up cicadas and

26:43

they were bigger than they were supposed to be .

26:46

Interesting . It's exciting for

26:48

the students too .

26:49

And the yeah . Well , of course . Basically

26:51

we make a prediction . All their predictions were

26:54

wrong , but

26:56

Monty Lloyd and John White said

26:58

if they should . What they discovered was that in

27:00

the first five years of life 17-year

27:04

cicadas only molt once underground , whereas

27:08

13-year cicadas molt twice . And

27:10

they said if a 17-year cicada should

27:12

molt an extra time in that first five years

27:15

they'll come up four years early

27:17

. So we were going to test

27:19

that . Telling

27:24

your students in 1991 that nine years they're going to have early acceleration is

27:26

like telling them don't smoke because you're going

27:28

to get cancer . So we waited and

27:31

so I continued digging them up every year to see

27:33

their growth and

27:36

I felt confident enough for monitoring that

27:38

that they would come out four years early . And

27:40

they did . Then

27:43

their second question is will

27:45

they stay 13 years cicadas , or shift

27:47

back to 17 years ?

27:49

Yeah .

27:49

So what do you think we should do about that ? How

27:53

would you determine that ?

27:56

would you continue to track and monitor

27:58

and dig up cicadas as you make your prediction

28:01

?

28:02

You could , but the real prediction is when they come out .

28:04

Right .

28:05

What you do is you wait 13 years

28:07

13 years .

28:08

You were very , very patient .

28:11

Oh yeah , if I worked on fruit flies I'd

28:13

have this all solved in a month , but

28:16

no . So 13

28:18

years later , a few hundred came out . I actually

28:20

watched them come out , but not enough to overwhelm

28:22

predators they all got . But no . So 13 years

28:25

later , a few hundred came out . I actually watched them come out , but not enough

28:27

to overwhelm predators they all got eaten . We never heard a single one at the emergency site

28:29

, we never . We found isolated wings and skins , but

28:31

no adults singing or mating

28:33

. Four years later , massive

28:36

numbers come out , oh wow . And

28:42

they're joined by more accelerating cicadas , think from brood 10 , and the net result

28:45

now we've gotten set up . In the year 2000 I had five location

28:47

where we had matings uh

28:49

, singing , mating , and they like now at

28:51

33 locations . And

28:53

they not only came out here , they came out in baltimore

28:56

and washington and indianapolis

28:58

and Louisville , in addition to Cincinnati . And

29:01

so clearly what happens

29:03

is they come out four years early and

29:05

they shift back to 17 .

29:07

Interesting , that is interesting

29:09

.

29:13

And so what we've actually now seen since

29:15

we have two of these , we've actually now seen the origin of a new brood , yeah , There'll

29:17

be brood , six by designation , coming out

29:19

in greater cincinnati that was something I didn't

29:22

know about until I read this book that there

29:24

could be just as broods could go extinct

29:26

there can be new broods

29:28

as well , and right and this and all this I

29:30

would just describe , except this is the first

29:32

generation .

29:33

Brood 13 came

29:35

out in chicago in the year 2020

29:37

, four years early , singing and

29:40

mating and lagging . So they're on the verge of

29:42

seeing a possible brood nine coming

29:44

out in the future .

29:46

Wow .

29:47

So that was the one thing that I would

29:50

say was the weirdest . The one that I'm

29:52

really most proud of is the

29:56

man that wrote that paper , with his wife Joanne . Uh

29:58

, monty Lloyd . I was a good friend . Uh passed

30:01

away and

30:03

I was asked to give a memorial lecture

30:05

at the university of Chicago where he taught for

30:07

years . And while I was there you had an email

30:09

from somebody in Northern Kentucky saying I've got periodical

30:12

scabies this year and

30:14

I thought they're not supposed to be there . So

30:16

I inquired do

30:22

they have red eyes ? Oh yeah , they do . So I came back from Chicago and went out and

30:24

checked and , sure enough , they were periodical cicadas and there

30:26

was no brood expected in that

30:29

part of Northern Kentucky and Western Ohio

30:31

for the year 2001

30:33

. So then

30:36

I remembered that in 1988

30:39

, a year after brood teneon emerged , there were a lot of

30:41

cicadas that came out around

30:43

Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky

30:46

. They came out , I thought , after

30:48

18 years , because Monty Lloyd , the same individual , had written

30:50

a paper with John White saying 17-year

30:52

cicadas emerging after 18 years . This

30:56

really establishes it . Didn't think anything of

31:00

it . Now it's 2001

31:03

and it happens again and I started

31:05

thinking wait a second , wait a second . 88

31:07

, 2001, . That's 13

31:09

years , okay

31:12

, 88

31:16

, you know it started going back , that's 75

31:18

. That's the paper that Monty Lloyd

31:20

talked about coming out for 18 years and is

31:22

like less than 50 miles away . So

31:25

then I wanted for me , I want to have four consecutive

31:27

emergencies to prove that it's a 13-year cicada

31:29

, right ? So I went looking

31:31

and I found some of the records for the Melba

31:33

Lock and Dam in 1962 . They had to shut

31:35

down construction for a couple of days . To quote clean the locusts off the rig . 1962

31:39

, they had to shut down construction for a couple days to quote

31:41

clean the locusts off the rig .

31:43

That's great .

31:44

So now we have what ? An established

31:46

13-year brood of cicadas in southwest

31:48

Ohio and northern Kentucky , southwest Ohio in particular

31:50

which meant there are three new species records for

31:53

the state of Ohio , and very

31:55

few of my colleagues believe me . So

31:59

what do you do to prove it ? You

32:02

wait 13 more years and

32:06

in 2014 , they'd come

32:09

out in massive numbers again , all

32:11

three species and it's clear that

32:13

they are 13-year cicadas , because there's one cicada

32:16

species that has a very unique coloration on the underside

32:18

of its abdomen Imagine cicada tridescim and

32:20

they were there and

32:28

so literally to be able to discover a misidentified brood and what

32:30

had happened was it came out simultaneously with brood 14

32:32

in 1923

32:35

. It came out 13 years later with

32:37

brood 10 , both of which occur in Southwest

32:39

Ohio , so they just were reassigned there and

32:41

then nobody did any follow-up after World War II and

32:44

so they had just been assumed to be part of Brood X and

32:46

Brood XIV . And to be able to find

32:48

that shows there's still a lot of really fundamental

32:51

stuff you can still find . That's

32:55

really neat .

32:56

There's a whole way to explore

32:58

, a whole horizon to explore with this

33:00

Do

33:03

you have any more questions , Lynn ? No

33:06

, I'm good .

33:08

There is a quiz . There is a quiz coming

33:10

.

33:10

Oh , no , all right .

33:12

That's the quiz . Oh , college professor

33:14

, there's got to be a quiz , there's always got to be a quiz , all

33:18

right .

33:19

Well , college professor , give

33:21

us your quiz .

33:22

No , if you want to , okay , you want

33:24

a quiz , let's go for it .

33:25

Let's go for it .

33:28

I could be really , really persnickety

33:30

and ask

33:32

detailed questions like where they should be coming out

33:34

. But let's do something a little more . Can

33:39

cicadas get sick ?

33:43

They get diseases . That's

33:45

a great question , I would imagine the

33:47

answer is yes , yes , yes and they get a fungus

33:50

that leaves a white chalk , that's right

33:52

there , you literally read the book .

33:53

That's excellent . Yes , that fungus

33:55

massospora fungus affects these cicadas

33:57

. We don't know how they come up with it . They get it

34:00

the first time . But we do

34:02

have circumstantial evidence

34:04

that it's sexually transmitted . But

34:06

how do the nymphs get infected ? First of all , that's what we don't

34:08

know yet .

34:10

Does that only affect periodical cicada

34:12

?

34:13

No , there are similar fungi

34:15

that affect the annual cicadas as well . Okay

34:17

, but apparently it can lay dormant in the soil for

34:19

17 years , the spores . And

34:22

so what happens ? The infected

34:24

cicada ? Now this doesn't have . They don't

34:26

come out fully infected . Usually it's late

34:28

in the emergence

34:30

cycle , probably the fourth week they've been out . You'll

34:34

start seeing cicadas with these . Their tips are all sort of white between

34:36

the segments and then their

34:40

butt falls off .

34:41

Yeah .

34:42

And it hyper-sexualizes these . This

34:47

is where it's become R-rated .

34:48

now You'll

34:50

edit this part out , Diane .

34:54

If there's a male cicada in the tree and he starts singing

34:56

for a mate , an infected

34:58

male cicada will flick its wings

35:01

like it's a female .

35:02

Oh , wow .

35:03

Luring in the amorous male

35:05

, basically to inoculate

35:08

.

35:08

That's transmitting the fungus .

35:09

And transmit the fungus .

35:11

Oh , wow , yeah , Cicadas are cool

35:13

.

35:14

They are fun Well .

35:15

the most interesting fact that I learned in your book

35:17

was that the ovipositor the

35:20

female laying eggs is not only serrated

35:22

but reinforced with metals .

35:25

Yes , that was a project that

35:27

I did with Matt Leonard at

35:29

Kent State University's TARC campus . There

35:33

was a paper published about 20 years ago I believe it was

35:35

now that had done some molecular

35:38

analysis , chemical analyses of the ovipositors

35:40

of wasps , ichneumonid wasps particularly

35:42

that lay their eggs in trees . I

35:45

know those and they

35:48

found that they were impregnated with metals . And

35:50

so the observation is I'll bet

35:52

cicadas do that as well . So I

35:54

tried to get some colleagues at Mount St Joe

35:56

to help me with that , but we didn't have the

35:58

technology yet . Tried to get some colleagues at Mount St Joe

36:00

to help me with that , but we didn't have the technology yet . But Matt was able to get his

36:02

hands on an electron microscope that did elemental

36:05

analysis , and so I went out and collected

36:07

all three species of periodical cicadas and

36:09

an annual cicada . We send them up there and they

36:11

did the chemical analysis and , sure enough , the

36:15

ovipositive and impregnative

36:17

metal . What's really interesting is the concentration

36:20

of the metals are highest at

36:22

the tip that actually does the sawing into the tree . So

36:25

for the ovipositor there's a central rod

36:27

and then there's two serrated blades that

36:30

slide along the rod , cutting

36:32

into the tree , and where

36:35

they're serrated there's more metal than

36:37

there is at the base

36:39

.

36:39

At the base . Interesting . That's

36:42

fascinating . It's

36:46

just fascinating . I'm a nerd too

36:48

.

36:49

There's nothing wrong with being a nerd . Well

36:52

, dr K , thank you so

36:54

much for being on the Adventures in Learning

36:56

podcast . We appreciate your time and

36:59

we can't wait to send people to check

37:01

out Cicada Safari .

37:03

Great . I welcome their help

37:05

and thank you for having me on .

37:07

Thank you , take

37:09

care . Wow . Dr K was

37:11

everything you promised , and more

37:13

so . What were some of

37:15

your big takeaways from today ?

37:18

Well , you've got to be patient if

37:20

you want to study cicadas , but at the

37:22

same token , there's a way for everyone

37:25

to get involved with this , and I

37:27

highly recommend getting you to cicadasafariorg

37:32

, which is the website he mentioned and

37:34

the Cicada Safari app on your phone

37:36

. It's got a cute little cicada that takes

37:38

off when you open it .

37:39

Oh , I can't wait to go travel . I've already

37:41

planned in the back of my head where I'm going to go to

37:43

look for cicadas .

37:45

So it's all . There's several things

37:47

citizen science , things you can do besides documenting

37:49

the cicadas , but on the website

37:52

there's an oral history piece with some

37:54

questions . Do you know someone ? Does your grandmother

37:56

live in Ohio ? Do you know someone that

37:58

might have seen one of these emergencies ? They're

38:01

collecting the oral histories . I

38:03

think Dr Kritsky mentioned

38:05

the origami . There's a coloring

38:08

page . There's also a cool

38:10

project after the cicadas emerge

38:12

and I've actually seen this done with abandoned

38:15

anthills as well where

38:17

you take plaster of Paris and

38:19

you pour it right into the holes and you can study

38:22

the structures . This is his book

38:24

. You can study the structures of the

38:26

cicada burrows after they

38:28

emerge , right .

38:29

They have to be long gone , folks , yeah

38:32

.

38:33

There's directions . There's directions

38:35

about how to do that as well

38:37

, and some other activities and tons

38:40

of facts Some of the facts we talked about

38:42

today , but all kinds of

38:44

facts about cicadas .

38:46

That is so cool and next week we're going to

38:48

be going even deeper . This week

38:50

you got to get all the facts about cicadas

38:52

. Next week we're going to talk to some authors

38:54

. We're going to learn about eating

38:57

cicadas . There might

38:59

be a little art involved , so you're

39:01

going to want to tune back in If

39:03

you're not satisfied with all things cicadas

39:05

. I promise we're not done yet . There's

39:08

more to come and a lot of really fun

39:10

stuff . So tune in next week to the

39:12

Adventures in Learning podcast and we hope you enjoyed

39:14

today's episode . You've

39:17

been listening to the Adventures in learning podcast

39:19

with your host , dr diane . If you

39:21

like what you're hearing , please subscribe

39:23

, download and let us know what you think

39:25

, and please tell a friend . If

39:27

you want the full show notes and the pictures

39:30

, please go to dr dianeadventurescom

39:32

. We look forward to you joining

39:34

us on our next adventure .