Brood X
The combination of the insects' long underground life, their nearly simultaneous emergence from the ground in vast numbers and their short period of adulthood allows the brood to survive even massive predation.
[1] Brood X is endemic in Indiana, Ohio, southeastern Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, East Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, DC, and other areas throughout the eastern United States.
[6] In 1737, botanist John Bartram wrote a letter that described the periodicity of the brood's emergences and his 1732 observations of the insect's insertion of their eggs into the small branches of trees northwest of Philadelphia.
[8] Pehr Kalm, a Finnish naturalist visiting Pennsylvania and New Jersey in 1749 on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, observed in late May that year's emergence of Brood X.
[9][10] When reporting the event in a paper that a Swedish academic journal published in 1756, Kalm wrote: The general opinion is that these insects appear in these fantastic numbers in every seventeenth year.
Kalm summarized his findings in a book translated into English and published in London in 1771,[11] stating:There are a kind of Locusts which about every seventeen years come hither in incredible numbers ....
In April 1800, Benjamin Banneker, who lived near Ellicott's Mills, Maryland, wrote in his record book that he recalled a "great locust year" in 1749, a second in 1766 during which the insects appeared to be "full as numerous as the first", and a third in 1783.
[14] Describing an effect that the pathogenic fungus, Massospora cicadina, has on its host,[15] Banneker's record book stated that the insects:.... begin to Sing or make a noise from first they come out of the Earth till they die.
[17][23] An entomologist with Cornell University's integrated pest management program suggested that widespread tree removal during development and pesticide use on the island had caused the brood's extirpation there.
[30] On June 8, small numbers of cicadas were heard in Connetquot River State Park Preserve in Suffolk County on New York's Long Island.
[32] The next day, Biden swatted a cicada that had landed on his neck while he was standing on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland before boarding Air Force One to begin his flight to England.
The mite usually feeds on oak leaf gall midge (Polystepha pilulae) larvae and other insects, but becomes an ectoparasite of periodical cicada eggs and quickly reproduces when those are available.
[42] When Brood X re-emerged in 1987, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed in a radio address: "Like the cicadas, the big spenders are hatching out again and threatening to overrun Congress."
During that year's presidential election campaign, the Republican National Committee placed on the web an advertisement that compared Democratic candidate John Kerry to a periodical cicada.
[46] In 2015, singer-songwriter Keith M. Lyndaker Schlabach recorded the song Cicadance at the Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community (RRSRC) near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
The song, which Swift first wrote during the brood's 2004 emergence, compares to a cicada a woman who is trying to re-join her reluctant ex-husband after leaving him for another man 17 years earlier.
