May 28, 2013

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The Swan Song of the Cicadas

By Hannah Waters

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

After surviving cicada emergences and witnessing several cycles of journalism's cicada beat, you'd think I'd have seen it all. Articles about prime number cycling and climate change, evolution and recipes. I even contributed to the pile-on in 2011, considering why bursts of cicadas don't seem to help bird populations. All of this attention is, of course, well-deserved: cicadas are fascinating animals that we only experience briefly.

But somehow through all of this, there was something missing: a time-lapse film that encapsulated their above-ground lifecycle. I had never seen footage of nymphs tunneling out from below the soil, being eaten by turtles and ants, and their rice-sized larvae emerging from holes bored in tree branches to fall and burrow back underground.

Thanks to Samuel Orr, 2013 is the year when I finally saw all this. He's released a glorious 7-minute preview of a documentary he's planning--which you can lovingly Kickstart--that I can't seem to stop watching. (Seriously. It's been close to 10 times in just the past five days.)

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It reminds me of how little of the cicada lifecycle we actually experience, for all we complain about the noise. We see the nymphs' husks stuck to the sides of trees or park benches, and hear the millions of cicadas calling in synchrony from the treetops. But it's easy to forget that our experience spans just 6 weeks or so of lives that are 17+ years long--just the swan song (or death rattle) of the cicadas.

Watch the stunning preview below (in HD), and Kickstart the project here.

https://vimeo.com/66688653

Image: Flickr user janesays

Hannah Waters is a science writer fascinated by the natural world, the history of its study, and the way people think about nature. On top of science blogging, she runs the Smithsonian's Ocean Portal, a marine biology education website, and is science editor for Ladybits.

Hannah is a child of the internet, who coded HTML frames on her Backstreet Boys fanpage when she was in middle school. Aptly, she rose to professional science writing through blogging (originally on Wordpress) and tweeting profusely. She's written for The Scientist, Nature Medicine, Smithsonian.com, and others.

Before turning to full-time writing, Hannah wanted to be an oceanographer or a classicist, studying Biology and Latin at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She's done ecological research on marine food webs, shorebird conservation, tropical ecology and grassland ecosystems. She worked as a lab technician at the University of Pennsylvania studying molecular biology and the epigenetics of aging. And, for a summer, she manned a microphone and a drink shaker on a tour boat off the coast of Maine, pointing out wildlife and spouting facts over a loudspeaker while serving drinks.

Email her compliments, complaints and tips at culturingscience at gmail dot com.

More by Hannah Waters

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