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insects are one of the most diverse groups of animals in the world, more than a million species identified and a few million yet to be discovered. cicada is of the order hemiptera, there are many thousands of species of cicadas, mostly living hidden in the rain forest canopy and regarded as indicators of rain forest types and of degeneration of their environment.
most cicadas go through a life cycle that lasts between two to five years, some species goes through a 13- or even 17-year life cycle, most of this time spend underground as nymphs, most adult cicadas live 2 to 3 weeks but some live only for a day or two or less. adult cicadas are sometimes called as "imagines".
cicadas are the only known insects known to cool themselves by sweating. they produce a wide variety of fascinating songs, only male cicadas have loud noisemakers called "tymbals" a drum-like structure on their sides, they can produce sounds louder than 100 dB ! louder than a large diesel truck at full power, can be heard up to a mile. they modulate their noise by wiggling their abdomens toward and away from the tree that they are on. they feed by piercing the surface of plants with their mouth stylets.
posted by wildpic at 6:44 PM
14 Comments:
hello all ... am learning so much by posting my pics,i search for hours for the info that i post which i enjoy too. but i think its a bit too long and may be unnecessary info on the blog. please let me know what u think. thank you. cheers !
No suresh, you are being specific and too the point, amazing info, no its not long
Silent valley is silent due to the abscence of this creature
The reading and information I get here works fine for me. Many times, ... it is needed!
Nice work you have here, and I'm particularly partial to the nephila image with that neat looking web.
Way cool!!!
thanks rauf !
indeed, silent valley so some strange reason does not encourage our cicadas, will find out more on it.
thanks for droppin by mr michael brown, i welcome your coment.
cheers !
Great macro shot! Nice focus.
i grew up on an estate. went to sleep every night to the music of the cicadas.
whenever i left the estate as a child i couldn't sleep because the cicada sound was missing. maybe you should upload a recording for everyone to enjoy.
great picture, i know they are very difficult to spot even when they are making a racket! i wonder how the female cicada homes in when they are so many males in one place.
thanks jill, yes it was a macro 105 mm f 2.8 nikon pushed the apeature up to 19 may be.
hi chinna, indeed after a point they become music to the ears. its a very good idea to include a sound clip along with the post, will try that soon.
yes they are very tricky to spot even tho they are there in 1000's in one place. about the females homing in, each species has a different frequency and a song to distinguish themselves. about the female choosing the mate among many ... well who ever's got the best vocals ... sorry tymbals !
Been a long time since i have seen one of these, there were tons in florida, but none here ;)
yeah david, they are more tropical than temperate, seeing your pics its not hard to imagine how tough it is for anybody who lives purely outdoors ! ;)
Hello, Suresh,
Your well-researched info is amazingly informative and I enjoy it, though I usually can read only a few items before my discretionary time is gone. Also, I am out here (on the Web) just once in awhile and so miss many of your posts. Don't know if my surfing experience is typical... Good luck finding a good balance of your time vs. benefit of educating the rest of us!
I'm most aware of the 17-year variety of cicada. I've been through two cycles now at a place where the soil has not been excavated for almost 100 years, so the population is quite large. The enormity of their sound at the peak of their season is very hard to describe. I don't know the db output, but I can say that the cicadas in my backyard maxed out my eardrums. Because of their rising song, I knew that they had gotten louder, but my ears could register no more volume than what they had encountered on the rise. The closest I've ever come to that was holding my sobbing infant, but that was more piercing and brief; the cicada song was overwhelming and of much longer duration (hours, days, weeks).
Norwood Matt stopped traffic once (on a busy street) when his using a lawnmower somehow attracted enough cicadas to completely cover his t-shirt. Apparently he was putting out a very attractive signal!
hi laura ... thank you so much for spending your little time here on the blog, am very happy ! and theres no typical about surfing. its great u find the info usefull and n'joyin it. the good thing about the blog is that all my earlier posts are here to stay hopefully).
yes there are some 13 and 17 year cicadas in america, not much study done here in the tropics. but plenty of research done out there, if u need more info will post them for you, would be happy to. yes they can get real loud n go on and on. sometimes when am walking in the woods they just sudddenly start and then its like the jungle has frozen, they keep varying the resonance and make a song which is unreal n they would suddenly stop, the woods frozen again of another kind. but i dont know the song of the species that u encounter near ur home.
norwood matts episode sounds funny, am sure him narrating the experience must be interesting. sure its some where in his posts, obviously the cicada girls thought hes the 'man', its the lawn movers frequency that worked for him !
by the way thanks laura, hope i do justice to what i know vs what i dont know.
ayse ... no style was intended except keeping facts as i see, simple n understandable, but my doubt was 'what i know' vs 'what i dont know' as always i guess. its very reassuring to hear that it works n u enjoyin it really really really. thanks so much for being so supportive : ) yes u said it ... i do want it to be a " humble blog that offers a window to whats natural in the world " sounds way cool ayse.
your blog is a wonderfull, honest, as it is, colourfull, playfull and very you ... and u cant self-destruct 'it' ...
see u soon .....
Beautiful blog and beautiful photos. You say that when the Buddha held up a flower nobody understood. I thought I remember hearing that only one of his disciples -- I think it was Ananda -- understood and smiled. I'll have to research that.
welcome james kershner(jwkoncape), you are partly right with the whole dialogue ... nobody understood; only mahakasyapa smiled. buddha said, "the all-pervading true dharma i transmit to mahakasyapa."
i ignored that part because, nobody understood that either ! and also to heighten the experience of the known (flower) through the unknown with a question such as "originally there is nothing, where can you find dust ?"
thanks for dropping by and for your comment and the question. i appreciate.
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