Driven Buggy
It's like something out of a horror movie: mysterious red-eyed creatures emerging from the earth after spending years underground.
But the good news is weather and geography could spare Butler County from the worst effects of the return of the periodical cicadas, commonly but mistakenly referred to as the 17-year locusts. (Locusts are not cicadas. They have their own distinct features.)
While the cicada is harmless to humans and animals, it can be a nuisance.
Cicadas are about 1½ inches long with reddish eyes and orange wing veins, according to Gregory Hoover, senior extension associate in entomology at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
Hoover noted cicadas are clumsy fliers, often colliding with objects. Males begin their constant singing shortly after they emerge from their larval state, but the females are mostly silent. When heard from a distance, the cicadas' chorus is a whirring monotone, sometimes described as eerie-sounding.
Residents of 17 eastern Pennsylvania counties soon will see an emergence of cicadas.
“We think of them as the Methuselah of the insect world,” said Hoover.
“They have a bizarre life history,” said Stephen Mayfield, a biology instructor at Butler County Community College with a background in entomology.
Hoover said cicada nymphs spend 17 years underground, sucking nutrients from plant roots. Then in late April or May at the end of their cycle, the nymphs burrow to within an inch of the surface where they wait to emerge.“Soil temperatures reaching 64 degrees Fahrenheit and a light precipitation event seem to be prerequisites for cicadas to emerge,” Hoover explained.When the time is right, the nymphs exit the soil through half-inch holes and climb a foot or more up trees or other objects. Within an hour, they shed their nymphal skins and become adults.“The larvae live underground and then large numbers emerge and basically mate, lay eggs and die,” said Mayfield.“These insects are harmless to people, but they can cause some damage to shade trees, fruit trees and high-value woody ornamental plants,” said Hoover.The damage caused by cicadas occurs when a female uses a sawlike organ on her abdomen to cut into the bark of a tree to lay eggs.Adults live up to four weeks above ground. Six to seven weeks after the eggs are laid, nymphs hatch and drop to the ground. There, they enter the soil, not to see the light of day for 17 years.The cicadas surfacing this year are members of Brood II, which last was seen in 1996. In Pennsylvania, the distribution of Brood II includes Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Chester, Dauphin, Delaware, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Luzerne, Monroe, Montgomery, Northampton, Philadelphia, Pike, Schuylkill and Wyoming counties, said Hoover.The insects also will emerge throughout Connecticut and New Jersey, and in parts of New York, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, according to Hoover.“This brood is big news because it is a big brood in New York and Washington, D.C., big media outlets,” said Steve Jenkins, an entomologist at Grove City College.
Hoover said Butler County, along with Allegheny, Washington, and Westmoreland counties, won't be due for a major brood emergence until 2018.But Don Eggen, chief of the division of forest pest management in the Forestery Bureau of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, believes this year's cicada swarm emergence has been delayed by a spate of cold weather.“This particular brood is believed to be centered principally in eastern Pennsylvania, although it may reach the Lehigh Valley,” said Eggen.“The best information I have is that they should come out in the latter half of May, but it's been so cold, I haven't seen anything,” said Eggen who was in Coudersport, Potter County, at the end of May as part of the department's anti-gypsy moth effort.“I haven't seen anything, I haven't had any reports that they have emerged,” said Eggen, who has been in the field since May 16 overseeing the spraying of 42,000 acres of state and federal-owned woodlands.Unlike the cicadas, which at their worst will damage a few shrubs or saplings during egg-laying, the gypsy moth is a pest whose larval stage causes heavy damage and defoliation to host trees, primarily oak.According to the Penn State Extension Service, the gypsy moth has been moving west, with the leading edge of the infestation in Centre, Blair, Huntingdon and Clearfield counties.
Not only do moth larvae kill trees through heavy defoliation, some people are allergic to the caterpillars. Their hairs have been known to cause skin rashes, with children more prone to the problem.The gypsy moth was accidentally introduced into this country in the last century.Another more recent and unwelcome insect immigrant has been the brown marmorated stink bug which turned up in eastern Pennsylvania in 1998 and by 2010 had spread west into 37 counties including Butler, according to the extension service.Mayfield said the stink bug and the cicada are related.“Both of these bugs are true bugs, meaning they have piercing, sucking mouthparts that feed on plants,” said Mayfield.The extension service says that for a relative newcomer, the stink bug has inflicted severe losses on apple and peach orchards in the state and has been sampling Pennsylvania's blackberry, sweet corn, field corn and soybean crops as well.
“Certainly, there is a concern about different insects and stink bugs are one,” said Mark O'Neill, media relations director for the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.“For orchard growers, peaches and apples, the stink bug is really devastating,” O'Neill said. “Peaches are so soft, it's a delicate crop to begin with.”“Stink bugs put marks on apples. You can cut around them, but it makes them really unsalable,” O'Neill said.Coming from overseas, the stink bug has few natural predators, said Jenkins.“It doesn't have the natural enemies that native insects have, so the population builds up pretty quickly,” said Jenkins.A native of China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, the stink bug is a nuisance not only for the damage it inflicts but because it is attracted to houses as it searches for a place to spend the winter.They can't cause harm to humans but they can cause alarm as they noisily fly about a room. And, of course, stepping on one releases their namesake smell.“They secrete a stinky substance to prevent predation,” said Mayfield.But beyond that, their size and ungainly flights make them objects of terror for some people.“Stink bugs and cicadas aren't a real problem to people. They're just big, clumsy, goofy bugs,” said Mayfield.<br></br><br></br><br></br><br></br>
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