Get ready, Brood X is coming.
INDIANA to be bombarded!
This May billions of black, shrimp-size bugs with transparent wings and beady red eyes will carpet trees in the U.S. from the eastern seaboard west through Indiana and south to Tennessee. By the end of June they'll be gone, not to be heard from or seen again for 17 years.
"Many people view them with horror or as an aberration and don't appreciate that they are a natural part of our eastern forests," said John Cooley, a cicada expert at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
The bugs belong to the largest group, or brood, of periodical cicadas—insects that spend most of their lives as nymphs, burrowed underground and sucking sap from tree roots. They emerge once every 17 years, transform into adults, do the business of reproduction, and then die.
INDIANA to be bombarded!
This May billions of black, shrimp-size bugs with transparent wings and beady red eyes will carpet trees in the U.S. from the eastern seaboard west through Indiana and south to Tennessee. By the end of June they'll be gone, not to be heard from or seen again for 17 years.
"Many people view them with horror or as an aberration and don't appreciate that they are a natural part of our eastern forests," said John Cooley, a cicada expert at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
The bugs belong to the largest group, or brood, of periodical cicadas—insects that spend most of their lives as nymphs, burrowed underground and sucking sap from tree roots. They emerge once every 17 years, transform into adults, do the business of reproduction, and then die.
