Found in the house
Location: chatham, On
January 16, 2012 1:43 pm
My mothers husband was cleaning in their living room and found this skin of what i thought was a junebug, but at a closer glance i realized that it wasn’t. Can you please tell me what this is because the pincher arms scare me a little with my young kids going there. It might be in the house, it was at one time at least to shed its skin.
Signature: Carly

Cicada Exuvia

Hi Carly,
This is the exuvia or cast of skin of a Cicada.  Cicada nymphs live underground, often for many years.  When they are ready to metamorphose into adults, they dig to the surface, split their skins to molt for the last time, and emerge as winged adults leaving the exuvia behind.

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This 17-year Cicada nymph missed the party
Location: Chicago, IL
December 8, 2011 12:29 am
I found this M. cassini nymph (judging by the fact this was the only song I heard in the area) on June 25, 2008 under a flat rock in my backyard on the far Southwest side of Chicago. It was a straggler from Brood XIII from 2007. I took this pic and let it crawl away.
Signature: Justin

Periodical Cicada Nymph

Hi Justin,
Thanks for sending us your photo of a “late” Periodical Cicada Nymph.  It is not unusual for individuals to be early or late, and if enough members of a brood emerge in a different year and mate and procreate, a new brood may be created once they return to the 17 year cycle.

Arizona cicada
Location: central Arizona (Aravaipa Canyon)
October 22, 2011 8:48 pm
This cicada was found (post-mortem, so no need to put this in the unnecessary carnage section! ) in October in Aravaipa Canyon in south-central Arizona. I hate to bother you with it, but I’m stumped. I looked through all the cicada photos I could find on your site plus some other sites and I couldn’t find any with that interesting orange X on the back that appears to be between the thorax and the abdomen. (Or maybe I did but was so bug-eyed from looking at hundreds of cicada photos that I missed it.) That just seemed to me to be an important distinguishing feature that I did not see on any other species I found. If you could help me identify it, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks,
Signature: Brian Jones

Apache Cicada

Hi Brian,
After some research, we believe this may be Diceroprocta apache, a species we have been unofficially calling the Apache Cicada.  You can see this posting to BugGuidethat explains how to differentiate the various members of the genus that are found in Arizona from one another.  We always welcome our readership to confirm or correct our sometimes questionable identifications.

Apache Cicada

Thank you so much for your amazingly fast response.  You guys perform an amazing service with your website.  It is both informative and entertaining.  Thank you for all of your efforts.
Take care,
Brian

Seventeen Year Cicada
Location: Glenview, Illinois
September 12, 2011 8:14 pm
Magicicada, image taken in June, 2007 in Cook County, IL. They will be back in 2024.
Signature: Venom

Periodical Cicada: Brood XIII

Hi Venom,
We are happy you included the date of the sighting.  We were actually a bit shocked to be receiving a submission of a Periodical Cicada in September.  This is a member of Brood XIII, called the Northern Illinois Brood according to the Periodical Cicada Brood website.

Thanks for the email. I had submitted some images of the Spinyback Orbweaver spiders, and in looking thru some of my jpegs, I thought it would be interesting to submit the Cicada. I actually put up a site, www.seventeenyearcicada.com  in which I posted many images back in 2007.
I’m kind of obsessed with close-up images of insects so I hope to post more as time goes by.
Thanks again,
John Spina

Hi John,
Now that you have opened the door on photography, and since our editorial staff teaches photography, and since we are very interested in staged photographs as much as we are interested in perfectly representational photographs of bugs, we feel compelled to ask if you found the Cicada on the geranium inflorescence or if you placed it there.

Good question. I placed it there, simply for the contrasting colors. Those bugs want nothing to do with flowers, their native positions are usually on tree leaves. Odd, they simply mate and die, don’t devour vegetation, and have no natural predators…against the rules of nature.
Anyway, I found it to be a nice color combination. Once I shot the image, she flew away. So, the subtitle should read “placed on the backdrop for color effect only”.
John

Hi again John,
We would like to qualify your latest response.  While it is true that adult Cicadas do not feed on leaves, they do feed on sap.  Also, they have numerous natural predators.  The emergence of swarms of Periodical Cicadas provides a bounty of food for birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects and spiders as well as a host of other predators that you might not expect.  Cicadas falling onto the surface of water will feed fish, and with the current fad of entomophagy gaining popularity, even people are getting in in the Cicada eating action.