Magicicada waits thirteen or seventeen years to scream
Cicadas are hemipteran bugs whose males buckle tymbals into some of insect life's loudest songs. At least three thousand species favor trees worldwide, mostly in the tropics. North America's Magicicada nymphs stay buried for thirteen or seventeen years, then erupt on schedule.
The superfamily holds two families: Tettigarctidae, a relict pair of species in southern Australia and Tasmania that lack hearing organs, and Cicadidae, with more than 3,000 described species on every continent but Antarctica. Adults mostly measure 2 to 5 centimetres, though the Malaysian empress cicada spans up to 20 centimetres of wing. Three small simple eyes arranged in a triangle between the big compound ones set cicadas apart from other true bugs, and they feed by driving a sharp beak into trees for watery xylem sap.
Males sing by buckling a pair of drum-like tymbals made of the elastic protein resilin, which snap back when the muscles relax; a largely hollow abdomen amplifies the sound, and Australia's greengrocer ranks among the loudest insects anywhere. Most species call by day. Desert cicadas such as Diceroprocta apache sweat, pushing surplus sap water through pores to cool themselves by about 5 °C, while others can warm themselves 22 °C above the air.
Forewings are coated in tiny waxy cones that shed rain and dirt, and the nanoscale spikes tear apart landing bacteria, the first natural material known to kill microbes that way. Most species are annual: nymphs may spend one to nine years underground, but emergence is staggered, so adults appear every summer. North America's Magicicada instead surface together every 13 or 17 years, perhaps overwhelming predators with sheer numbers.
Endemism is high; New Zealand's 40-plus species are found nowhere else, and England had just one, the New Forest cicada. Homer and Hesiod wrote of cicadas, Shang dynasty artists carved them, and people still eat them from China to Mexico.
Source: Cicada
