Now that the solar eclipse has passed, the next big phenomenon will be our emergence of Brood XIII periodical cicadas later this spring.  Since these insects emerge in Wisconsin every 17 years, you might only have a handful of opportunities to see them in the Badger State in your entire life.  Despite having grown up in southeastern Wisconsin and turning 40 next year, I still have not witnessed an emergence myself and I’m really looking forward to this year’s activity.

Since there will be so much “buzz” about these amazing insects, I recently launched a new Wisconsin Periodical Cicada website: cicadas.wisc.edu.  The site covers the biology, ecology, and distribution of these insects, with lots of photos, cool historical videos, and other resources.  This winter, I dug through 150+ years of books, newspaper columns, university/government reports, and specimens in our very own Wisconsin Insect Research Collection to develop an updated map of Wisconsin reports.  While the map on the website is an improvement over older ones, there’s still plenty to learn about the local distribution of these cicadas in the state.  To that end, I created a community science project on the website (cicadas.wisc.edu/community-science/) for folks to submit their sightings from Wisconsin—it’s a brief fillable form and photos can be uploaded right from your phone, tablet, or computer.

And feel free to stop by the diagnostic lab—I’ve got some new Brood XIII stickers to give away!

– PJ Liesch, UW Insect Diagnostic Lab

This article was posted in Features and tagged PJ Liesch.