More than You Ever Wanted to Know about Cicadas

This was the year of the cicadas, specifically the 17 year cicadas.  They were unbelievably numerous and loud here where I live. Their 17 year life cycle is so unusual that I thought I would check it out. Below is material googled on the internet from the University of Connecticut. 

General Periodical Cicada Information

Periodical cicadas are found only in eastern North America. There are seven species — four with 13-year life cycles and three with 17-year cycles. The three 17-year species are generally northern in distribution, while the 13-year species are generally southern and midwestern… Magicicada are so synchronized developmentally that they are nearly absent as adults in the 12 or 16 years between emergences. When they do emerge after their long juvenile periods, they do so in huge numbers, forming much denser aggregations than those achieved by most other cicadas.

Many people know periodical cicadas by the name “17-year locusts” or “13-year locusts”, but they are not true locusts, which are a type of grasshopper.

Cicada juveniles are called “nymphs” and live underground, sucking root fluids for food. Periodical cicadas spend five juvenile stages in their underground burrows, and during their 13 or 17 years underground they grow from approximately the size of a small ant to nearly the size of an adult.

Periodical cicada nymphs live underground for 13 or 17 years, keeping track of seasonal cycles (Karban et al. 2000) through some as-yet unknown mechanism.  In the spring of their 13th or 17th year, a few weeks before emerging, the nymphs construct exit tunnels to the surface, with exit holes roughly 1/2 inch in diameter. Emerging nymphs leave their burrows after sunset (usually), locate a suitable spot on nearby vegetation, and complete their final molt to adulthood.

After their short teneral period, males begin producing species-specific calling songs and form aggregations (choruses) that are sexually attractive to females. Males in these choruses alternate bouts of singing with short flights until they locate receptive females.  

Contrary to popular belief, adults do feed by sucking plant fluids; adult cicadas will die if not provided with living woody vegetation on which to feed. Adult Magicicada feed from a wide variety of deciduous plants and shrubs, but usually not from grasses.

Mated females excavate a series of Y-shaped eggnests in living twigs and lay up to twenty eggs in each nest. A female may lay as many as 600 eggs.

After six to ten weeks, the eggs hatch and the new first-instar nymphs drop from the trees, burrow underground, locate a suitable rootlet for feeding, and begin their long 13- or 17-year development. By the time that the nymphs hatch, the adults have died.

Periodical cicadas achieve astounding population densities, as high as 1.5 million per acre. Densities of tens to hundreds of thousands per acre are more common, but even this is far beyond the natural abundance of most other cicada species. Apparently because of their long life cycles and synchronous emergences, periodical cicadas escape natural population control by predators, even though everything from birds to spiders to snakes to dogs eats them opportunistically when they do appear. 

Other Common North American non-periodical cicadas include the large, greenish “dog-day” cicadas (genus Neotibicen) found throughout the U.S. in the summer. Non-periodical cicadas are often called “annual cicadas” (even though they typically have multiple-year life cycles) because in a given location adults emerge every year. The best way to identify cicada species is by the sounds that they make, because cicada songs are nearly always species-specific.

Pretty amazing, huh? It really was unbelievable. They covered everything for maybe a week and a half, and then, poof, were gone. How could a brainless bug know when 15 or 17 years have passed?

Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? They were made that way. Doesn’t it blow your mind away how God orchestrates his creation, even to bugs that sleep for 17 years? Each part of creation is interconnected with the parts around it. Each part interacts with and depends on the others. I’m not sure what good cicadas are to the environment but there must be something they do. Maybe all the holes they make aerate the soil.  

The point here is that we have an amazing God that has all the details already worked out. God doesn’t wait to the last minute to accomplish his purpose in our lives anymore than he does to the cicadas. We have a faithful God who never fails in his promises and will never fail us. So, the next time God seems distant, or you are wondering where he is, just remember the cicadas. When the time is right, God will bring you out of whatever is holding you back. And you will sign his praises. I just hope you sound better than the cicadas do. 

^{Matthew 6:25} “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[e]?

Psalm 100:5  ⁵ For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
    his faithfulness continues through all generations.

I’m not someone who makes a big deal of New Years Day or New Year resolutions. We don’t stay up to watch the ball drop. I tend to think of Advent and Christmas season as my new year. Advent is a season of reflection on the past and preparation for the new. For it is Christ who brings the new.

I know what it is like to be made over or made new. I am not the person I once was; conceited, prideful, self-centered. Not to say that I don’t still have those moments. Everyone does. But when I turned myself over to Christ, he began to re-make me into his image. Paul spoke of it: 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:^[a] The old has gone, the new is here!

God promised this long ago through the prophet Isaiah. God would not leave us or his creation broken and lost, yearning for what we didn’t even know we were missing. Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV¹⁸ “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. ¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

I still remember that old person that I used to be, but I don’t recognize her. Because I’m different… I don’t think the same or have the same attitudes. Many of the old things are no longer desirable. The closer I come to Christ, the further away that old me goes. As the saying goes, “God loves us too much to leave us where we are.” Have you turned over your heart and soul to God for renovation and re-creation?

We purchased and moved into an older house when I retired. We’ve spent the last two years fixing things that were wrong and renovating to make it what we want. And not one thing has been a straightforward job. Every single thing we have worked on has turned out to require way more work than anticipated. Each thing requires one or more other things to be done beyond the initial problem. It’s like that with our hearts and minds and our world as well. But God doesn’t quit. He works on each piece, fixing and making it new. We become a “new thing.”

Isaiah 65:16-18 NIV¹⁷ “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create. Believing what Christ had told them, the disciple, Peter wrote: (2 Peter 3:12-14 NIV)“¹³ But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

We are living right now in a new world due to the Covid 19 pandemic. I don’t think things will ever go back to the way they were. New ways of doing things have been discovered and implemented. Many new innovations work too well to go back to the old ways. We have all had to adapt to new things. We know that this situation will gradually get better, at least we hope so. But even if it doesn’t, we have God’s promise of new life, a new world, a new heaven and earth. When, we don’t know. But it will happen.

There’s a song from 1970 by the Mamas and the Papas called “New World Coming.” There’s a new world coming and it’s just around the bend. There’s a new world coming, this one’s coming to an end.

There’s a new voice calling, you can hear it if you try. And it’s growing stronger with each day that passes by.

There’s a brand new morning rising clear and sweet and free. There’s a new day dawning that belongs to you and me.

(Chorus) Yes, a new day’s dawning, the one we’ve had visions of coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love. Source: Musixmatch Songwriters: Barry Mann / Cynthia Weil

Yes, I know that I’m dating myself. But God’s promises still hold. The things that we dreamed of in the 70’s we dream of still, probably even more so. Despite all, God is doing a new thing. Let him do it in you.