Last night I learned a lot about these annoying little animals. A cicada is an insect with big eyes wide apart on the head an usually transparent, well-veinged wings... I would have to agree with the notion that it looks like a roach with wings.... So, there are approximately 2,500 species of cicada around the globe... and we have some of them here in St. Louis. Their remarkable acoustic talents came to my attention for the first time during my freshman year.... The only reason I look forward to winter is because they dissapear. But these annoying insects have a very interesting life cycle, and for that I give them some credit. Here's a little something from a wikipedia entry:"After mating, the female cuts slits into the bark of a twig and deposits her eggs there. She may do so repeatedly, until she has laid several hundred eggs. When the eggs hatch, the newborn nymphs drop to the ground, where they burrow. Most cicadas go through a life cycle that lasts from two to five years. Some species have much longer life cycles, e.g. the Magicicada goes through a 17- or occasionally 13-year life cycle. These long life cycles are an adaptation to predators such as the cicada killer wasp and praying mantis, as a predator could not regularly fall into synchrony with the cicadas. Both 13 and 17 are prime numbers, so while a cicada with a 15-year life cycle could be preyed upon by a predator with a 3- or 5-year life cycle, the 13- and 17-year cycles allow them to stop the predators falling into step.
The insects spend most of the time that they are underground as nymphs at depths ranging from about 30 cm (1 ft) up to 2.5 m (about 8½ ft). The nymphs feed on root juice and have strong front legs for digging.
In the final nymphal instar, they construct an exit tunnel to the surface and emerge. They then moult (shed their skins), on a nearby plant for the last time and emerge as an adult. The abandoned skins remain, still clinging to the bark of trees."
Update 7/6/07
