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U.S. braces for ‘Swarmageddon’ as billions of cicadas expected to emerge after 17 years underground
America’s East Coast is bracing for a cacophonous summer as hordes of flying insects emerge for a once-in-a-generation phenomenon popularly known as “Swarmageddon”.
After 17 years underground growing from larva to bug, billions of cicadas are about to revel in the final four climactic weeks of their unusual life cycle.
At some point over the next few weeks, when the temperature at eight feet below ground reaches a steady 64F, the nymphs, as juvenile cicadas are called, will scramble out of the ground.
They will then embark on their noisy, short-lived adult life in pursuit of a mate. Males flex their tymbals, drum-like organs in their abdomens, making a distinctive clicking sound. Female cicadas answer by snapping their wings. (Scott Olson/Getty Images File)
Maria Sibylla Merian turns 366 — Google celebrates by letting insects invade its logo
Maria Sibylla Merian changed the insect world with her illustrations — and she started when she was just 13.
Her youthful passion grew into a study of insects that would centuries later become the foundation for taxonomy.
Instead of studying lifeless preserved insects pressed in books, which was the common practice in the 1600s, Merian preferred watching a caterpillar evolve into a butterfly in its natural habitat. She began cataloguing the life cycles of plants and insects through her artwork — one of the first women to do so. (Wikimedia/Google)
Winnipeg is bracing for an early mosquito invasion
Winnipeggers might have welcomed this year’s early snow melt, but now they are bracing for its consequence: An early mosquito invasion. The insects are slated to buzz into Winnipeg sooner than usual, so the city’s insect control branch this week launched its larviciding activities, working to kill them before they reach the flying adult, biting stage.
The National Post’s Kathryn Blaze Carlson spoke with city councillor Scott Fielding about life in mosquitoville.
