Cicada Reunion Tour 2024 -- Meet Brood XIII on A Chicago Adventure with Dr. Diane and Lynn

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to witness a natural spectacle that only happens once every 17 years? From midnight adventures in Chicago's Centennial Park to loud walks through Ryerson Forest Preserve, join Lynn and Elena Coles and me as we dig deeper into the heart of the Cicada Convergence. Get to know the Brood XIII magicicadas and join us as we try to find all three species by sight and by call!

You may have already been inspired by the cicada convergence this year! In the first episode of this arc, we talked to the Indiana Jones of the cicada world, Dr. Gene Kritsky! In the second episode of the arc, we explored cicada history with Jennifer Coleman, entomorphogy (eating cicadas) with Christy Mihaly and Barry Schnoor, and cicada life cycles and wonder with children's picture book author Sue Fliess. For this last chapter of the cicada arc, we journey to the area around Chicago to record the amazing cicada party for ourselves -- and YOU!

In this episode, you'll see periodical cicadas shedding their exoskeletons and transitioning into adulthood. We share it all, from watching nymphs emerge from the ground to seeing adults ready to take flight. We highlight the differences between male and female cicadas, and the unique characteristics of their exoskeletons and ovipositors.

We take you into the Cicada exhibit at the Dunn Museum (featuring insights from Dr. Kritsky @cicadasafari  and amazing artwork from the very talented Samantha Gallagher @sammybeezz). We explore the excitement of cicada enthusiasts gathered to celebrate these extraordinary insects, learn about lifecycle differences between periodical and annual cicadas, and even encounter "zombie cicadas" affected by a fungus.

With various exhibits and personal anecdotes, we highlight the unique nature of periodical cicadas in the eastern/central United States. Our adventure concludes with valuable learning experiences, including picture books and STEM/STEAM activities that deepen our understanding of cicadas.

Subscribe, download, and share our journey—then visit drdianeadventures.com for full show notes and captivating pictures! There's even a video version of this podcast, complete with closeups of all the magicicadas discussed, for you to enjoy on YouTube!

Periodical Cicadas, 17-Year Life Cycle, Chicago, Centennial Park, Nymphs, Exoskeletons, Ovipositors, Biology, Male and Female, Annual Cicadas, Zombie Cicadas, Fungus, Dr. Gene Kritsky, Indiana Jones, Eastern United States, STEM/STEAM Activities, Entomogr

Transcript

00:01 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So three weeks ago you wouldn't have been able to hear my voice over the din of cicadas chorusing. Today it's very quiet here in Chicago. You just hear the traffic and the normal signs of planes and people. And there is evidence that once upon a time, not so very long ago, the magical cicadas rose from the ground, had their giant party and departed, leaving us with holes and nymphs who are underground for the next 17 years. Journey back in time and join Lin Coles and me on a fabulous cicada journey. 

00:46
Wonder, curiosity connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. So get yourself a friend like Lynn Coles, somebody that when they say let's go look for the cicadas, you say sure, never mind all the practical considerations of how are we going to get there? When are we going to go, you've got the friend who's got everything covered. These are the kinds of friendships I wish for everybody at least once in your lifetime that friend who you are delighted to go on the road with, that friend who challenges you, who gets you excited in their passions and who shows you things you never thought you'd see. So we had barely been in Chicago an hour when we took a little road trip on our way to our Airbnb and we discovered the cicadas at night in Centennial Park. I want you to listen for a moment and I'm going to show you some of what we heard. You see one emerging right now from its exoskeleton. 

01:45 - Speaker 3 (Host)
I want you to listen for a moment and I'm gonna show you some of what we heard. You see one emerging right now from its exoskeleton. These are gonna be periodical cicadas, so they look like they have black eyes right now, but they're going to have bright red eyes when their adult bodies harden and their wings fully unfurl. And over here you can see some holes where they have emerged and you can see lots of exoskeletons here and you can also see some very large worms over there. Yeah, interesting, so I'm sure this is quite a feast for the animals that feast on these kinds of things. 

02:31 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So let me set the scene for you Centennial Park, park, ridge neighborhood. Shadows are dark, the neighborhood is asleep. You're not hearing the sound of cicadas, except for the occasional male who has woken up and is testing his pre-call. Right now, the business of the cicadas is their transformation and this is the place to see it. So this is Dr Diane. We've literally been in Chicago for an hour and we're here in Parkside and we came to check out the cicadas. This is the quiet time. You're not going to hear a lot, but boy, is there magic happening. We're watching them emerge and we can see them in different states of development all the way up the tree. 

03:22 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Here there's a whole group of nymphs that look like they just came out of the ground and their hole's here, and I feel like you can see them going towards the. So they're looking for a tree a pole. These guys are crawling up the concrete To climb up, and then they can shed their exoskeleton and have their adult form with wings by the morning. They'll be able to fly away. Oh, look at that one their adult form with wings. 

03:47 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
By the morning they'll be able to fly away. Oh, look at that one. You can see the one on the grass, the little blade of grass that's trying to climb up. 

04:00 - Speaker 3 (Host)
So you can see the holes where the nymphs are emerging after their years. And you see they're climbing up this tree and they're in varying stages of emergence. Some of them are just coming out and you can't see really wings at all because they're still so crumpled. And then some of them you can see start to see what's going to be their adult shape. 

04:28 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So the ones that are in the tree, that are sort of half sticking out of their exoskeletons. 

04:35 - Speaker 3 (Host)
So here's one that you can really see the adult shape a little bit more. Adult shape a little bit more. And it's got its exoskeleton well, not anymore sticking to itself, so, and it looks like they have black eyes, but those are period, these are all periodical cicadas. They're going to have red eyes, very different than what we have in Florida and then the ones just above it, where they're still stuck to the tree. 

05:08 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
They're still in a state of emerging. 

05:10 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Yes, you can barely tell that those are going to have wings and they'll be. You know nice brown and grays and greens you can hear just a little bit of a click. 

05:41 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So we know that this one's a male because he's making noise. This is not the time of day that they typically make noise. We'll hear a lot more in the morning, but they've got the timbrels and they sound like little drums. 

05:56 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Imagine if you had been underground for 17 years. You would want to make a little bit of noise too. So this is a female cicada. She's been in the ground for 17 years and she decided to come out tonight and join the world. 

06:16 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And how do you know she's a female? 

06:17 - Speaker 3 (Host)
If you look carefully on the underside of her abdomen you can see the channel with the ovipositor. 

06:28 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And ovipositor is basically your egg depositor correct. 

06:29 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Yes, they use it. It's like a short, strong tube and they use it to lay eggs in small branches of trees, and the cells in the ovipositor actually have metal in them. It's very strong. 

06:45 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
It's also double serrated so kind of like a knife exactly, but on two sides. 

06:53 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Well, welcome to the world so this looks to be a female. There's an ovipositor, you can kind of see the channel there. Plus, she's not making any noise, while this guy, noisy boy, see it's more of a rounded abdomen and you don't see that ovipositor. 

07:23 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So are you trying to set up a date now I? 

07:26 - Speaker 3 (Host)
don't know, let's see if they like each other, because that is on my bingo card. 

07:33 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I think you got your wish. Look at her flicking her wings. Was he just rejected. 

07:46 - Speaker 3 (Host)
I believe so. She had an initial wing flip and then she was like not tonight. 

07:53 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So we're still keeping it PG here. Keeping it PG. Are you ready for today's adventure? We'll see the cicadas as they mate, as they reproduce and as they have that final cicada party to make sure that the population lasts for the next 17 years. As they reproduce and as they have that final cicada party to make sure that the population lasts for the next 17 years. All right, so, lynn, you are the mastermind behind our cicada adventures. How do you plot the day's journeys? What resources are you using? I? 

08:39 - Speaker 3 (Host)
am looking at the live map on Cicada Safari, which was populated with sightings, actual sightings by citizen scientists like you and I am looking at Google Maps and I am looking at the Facebook pages of Cicada Mania and Cicada Science Discussion and seeing where people have spotted things. But one thing I noticed on the map is if you just look at where the green, the saved green areas are, where we've actually saved some habitats and some greenery and not built over it, then that's where you're going to find the cicadas in the woods. 

09:21 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
We're at Lions Woods Park in the outskirtsirts of Chicago and you can see our various stages. You can definitely hear them. This morning they're coming in at about 74 decibels, which is the equivalent of your vacuum cleaner, and if you look up the tree you can see that we've got many, many, many of our friends here. 

09:51 - Speaker 2 (Host)
You can see here there's so many cicadas on the bark of this young tree and we were speculating that maybe that was because of the width of the tree. Limbs might be perfect for those female ovipositors to penetrate and lay eggs in. Of course, once they hatch, the nymphs drop to the ground burrow and stay in there for 17 years. But we plucked a few off the tree here and they were all males, so maybe they're Having a gathering. 

10:27 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So we've definitely moved from PG to R, slash, x rated, but a little more of the cicadas doing what cicadas are supposed to be doing. 

10:45
Thatcher Woods, frank Lloyd Wright's old neighborhood and currently the home to millions and millions of cicadas Decibel levels are consistently hitting about 88, which is comparable to your dishwasher. 

11:13
This old stump behind me is a really great example of how everything in the forest ecosystem is sort of working together to make this a perfect recipe for the cicada emergence. We start down here with the soft ground. You can feel that it's warm, and you've got the tunnels that they've recently hatched from, and so they've been lying at the roots of this tree that has probably seen emergence since at least the time of Thomas Jefferson. And then you work your way up the tree, and as we work our way up you can see that there's a nymph that stopped along the way, and then they've made their way right on up here to the underside of all of these leaves, where they're in that really cool stage before they're the full fledged adult cicadas. We're sort of in that final molting place, and tonight I expect we'll see them coming out doing what we saw last night, and then we'll have more cicadas to contribute to this beautiful noise mammal footprints are. 

12:15 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Those are raccoons, raccoons, look at that here. Raccoons, oh, those are cute, and I think over there raccoons, bigger raccoon maybe. Mm-hmm, do we think the raccoons and the deer and other animals might be eating cicadas? 

12:26 - Speaker 4 (Host)
I think over there raccoon bigger raccoon. 

12:27 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
maybe Do we think the raccoons and the deer and other animals might be eating cicadas. Yum, yum. So the cicadas fuel the ecosystem while they're around, and you can see the robin ahead of us doing a little foraging, and we suspect that the bunny might be joining in, but the robins are most definitely making a feast out of this. Cicada years tend to be really good years for other animals in the ecosystem, both in terms of those that immediately eat the cicadas as well as those further up the food chain. If you take a look, you'll see that there are big boom years that are associated in terms of life, the immediate year after one of these cicada explosions. So I'm currently registering between 85 and 90 decibels on my decibel meter. Lynn, what are you getting? 

13:30 - Speaker 2 (Host)
I scored a 96, but my decibel meter says that the highest it's heard in the last half hour is 99 decibels. My goal is to break 100. 

13:39 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I gotta tell you I know some people find this really annoying. I think it's soothing and it's almost like a wave, like you can hear it crescendo and then go back down. It's a very positive feeling. 

13:50 - Speaker 2 (Host)
It resonates somewhere inside of you. You feel the vibration. It's like the universe is speaking to you in some way. 

13:57 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Or at least all the male cicadas. Are you tired of same old, same old professional development experiences? Check out what recent workshop participants have to say about doing a workshop with Dr Diane's Adventures in Learning Great hands-on session that included real ideas to incorporate in the classroom. Wonderful, lots of great ideas and fun science experiments. It was great to be able to see how to make connections between the stories and science. 

14:32
If you are looking to raise your game and have a professional development experience that will leave your educators feeling rejuvenated and ready to directly apply ideas into their classrooms, reach out to Dr Diane's Adventures in Learning. We offer half and full day workshops that examine ways to build connections between multicultural picture books and STEM STEAM experiences for gains across the curriculum. All programs can be tailored to your specific needs, so find out what audiences across the country have been experiencing. Check out Dr Diane's Adventures in Learning at wwwdrdianeadventurescom. We hope to be in your school soon. So we are on day 2.1 of the cicada journey, since we did start with the midnight exploration. So, lynn, where are we driving right now? 

15:34 - Speaker 3 (Host)
We are going to the Dunn Museum in the Lake County Forest Preserves area, which is this big green belt, so we're slightly farther north of where we were yesterday. So it's going to be interesting to see what we find, because not only are we slightly north of course cicadas require a certain soil temperature to emerge but we are also, if you can see or not, it's a cloudy day today, sunny, so yesterday we could stop at a stoplight and see them flying around and I'm very curious to see. This is a little cooler and cloudier slightly farther north. 

16:13 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
if we will see the same number out and about and, lynn, you've been the one sort of being our guru on all things matches to Cicada. Why did you pick this for today? 

16:27 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Well again on Cicada Safari and Cicada Mania and other groups, because the Lake County Forest Preserves are this older growth forest and this land that's been preserved from human impact. This is where we're really going to see the creatures of all kinds, not just the cicadas, and all the data that scientists have tracked. For years they've been studying these emergencies. If they emerge one time, they're going to emerge another time, just 13 or 17 years later. So we know they're here, we know they're in the ground and we know it's time for them to come out. 

17:07 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I remember Dr Kritsky saying when we did our first podcast, that basically, if you want to study cicadas, you have to be super patient. Absolutely, and if there's a question you have, you can always wait 13 or 17 years to get the answer. Absolutely, we are arriving curious. Let's go learn about cicadas. Tell us your name and what you do here. 

17:28 - Speaker 4 (Host)
Okay, I'm Andy Walker and I'm the visitor services coordinator here at the Dunn Museum. I greet people, I answer phones, I talk about cicadas lately like nobody's business. I also do a lot of the ordering for the store and I open and close the store up and the museum during the day. 

17:49 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So how many people have come here recently looking for cicadas? 

17:54 - Speaker 4 (Host)
Gosh. Over the weekend we probably had close to 200 people and that was for probably just Saturday. So I mean normally on a good day, 30 people is a lot for us. So Saturday and Sunday it's probably closer to like 400. 

18:16 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Wow, and you said you have Cicada Fest this Sunday. Is that right? 

18:20 - Speaker 4 (Host)
We do yes, cicada Fest is going to be at Ryerson, which is one of our forest preserves with the Lake County Forest Preserves, and they plan on having crafts and little. They're going to show different parts of cicadas. I mean, they have lots of things planned for that day. 

18:39 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And everybody is excited about cicadas, very excited. 

18:43 - Speaker 4 (Host)
Yes, we. I've never realized that so many people were turned on by cicadas. They just love it. I had no idea. 

18:52 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So what's the single thing you've learned about cicadas that you've found to be the most fascinating? 

18:58 - Speaker 4 (Host)
The most fascinating, I think, is that some of them are well, a couple things here. Some of them are they have a fungus, so they're like zombie cicadas. Another fun fact is that they will be in trees and if you're under the tree you can get hit by cicada rain. So that happened to me yesterday. Oh, my goodness, it hasn't happened to me yet, so hoping it doesn't. 

19:25 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I figure I can check that off my cicada list now. I think you can, yep, and it's probably good luck, just like just like yoga and you get beat on by a goat. So so, as we go through the museum, what can we expect to see for cicadas? 

19:38 - Speaker 4 (Host)
well, you will see some larger than life cicadas. They're on the graphics in the wall, um, and you will see how the different cicadas sound. You will see, we have a local artist that has drawn some artwork for us, so you will see those as well. 

19:59 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And then, if we go to Ryerson, what can we expect to see today? You can expect to see millions of cicadas. 

20:04 - Speaker 4 (Host)
They are all over, like the shells are all over the grounds. They're crawling up trees, they are singing to each other, they're flying around. They'll even land on your shoulder. So, as long as you're not afraid, it'll be very gentle, very fun. 

20:19 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Excellent, and are you planning on being here when they come back in 17 years? I definitely will be here Excellent. 

20:25 - Speaker 4 (Host)
Come back. 

20:26 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I'll be here, All right, Lynn, you're currently building a cicada. What are the important things we should know about a cicada? 

20:35 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Well, they're true bugs. You've got to have the six legs. Cicadas are cool because they have five eyes. They have the two big ones that everyone notices, but they have these three little ones as well. You've got to have two sets of wings ones that everyone notices, but they have these three little ones as well. You're gonna have two sets of wings head, thorax, abdomen. 

20:55 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
How many legs? Six. 

20:59 - Speaker 3 (Host)
They're true bugs. 

21:02 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So, as we're going through this exhibit, I have noticed you know we've been looking all through Chicago. We're looking at this exhibit. I have noticed, you know we've been looking all through Chicago. We're looking at periodical cicadas in the Illinois area. You guys have been tracking annuals in Florida. 

21:19 - Speaker 3 (Host)
What's the difference between an annual and a periodical cicada? Well, annuals do not come out at a specific time, so the emergence with the periodicals is depending on what brood they're part of. So in this area it could be 13 or 17 years that they're coming out. And there are other broods as well Annuals they're in the ground still, but maybe two to five years so they don't, and they come out every year. So it's not a timed emergence with a mass. You have them every year and they're typically a little bigger. This is an annual cicada. The lack of red eyes is a huge indicator and these are one of the types we have in Florida. There's a variation of this. It's a hieroglyphic cicada that has the Johannes version, which is what we find in North Florida, which is where we're from. 

22:09 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Do they sound different? 

22:10 - Speaker 3 (Host)
They do sound different. Let's see if they have. Here is the annual. This is what we hear. Sounds like home. 

22:28 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And then, ooh, we've been listening to the Cassini. 

22:31 - Speaker 3 (Host)
we think so this is what we've heard here in the greater Chicago area. 

23:01 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Play the septendecular one. 

23:24 - Speaker 4 (Host)
It's interesting because we haven't been hearing them be isolated like this really bad without looking for them. 

23:28 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
We hear the whole chorus where they're all overlapping and you get kind of this. I was thinking it almost sounded like an ocean wave yesterday. And which one? Is that? The septendecim? We definitely have not heard that one, but I want to find it now. Maybe that's the one people have been mistaking for car alarms. Yes, yes, it's a very, doesn't it? It has a very car alarm sound. If you heard that at 96 decibels you would. I would think it was a car alarm turned off. 

24:04 - Speaker 3 (Host)
All right, so these are the two we're seeing here in the greater Chicago area. 

24:10 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I agree. As part of our investigation into the magical world of cicadas, lynn and I had the great good fortune of interviewing Dr Gene Kritsky, the Indiana Jones of the cicada world, for our Adventures in Learning podcast. Indiana Jones of the cicada world for our Adventures in Learning podcast. Let's check in for just a little snippet of a previous episode and then we'll take a look at the impact he's had on this exhibit here at the Dunn Museum. 

24:36 - Speaker 6 (Host)
The Magis cicada. The periodical cicadas that we have are endemic or unique to the eastern United States. They're as unique to the eastern US as giraffes are to Africa. 

24:46 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Excellent so that's when. 

24:49 - Speaker 6 (Host)
Where? Yes, the where depends on where you are in the world and if you have Cicada Safari. If you have Cicada Safari, you can watch the map live as people report. Things are verified. Their photos are verified. You'll see these little cicada icons popping up all over the map and you can actually zoom in right down to the street. 

25:12 - Speaker 7 (Host)
I'm so glad you brought us into this exhibit. It's so much fun to see Jane Kritsky's films on the working. How did you know this was a Jane Kritsky inspired exhibit? You walked in. 

25:26 - Speaker 5 (Host)
Well, I learned from reading more about him online and his work that he was involved in this exhibit, so I was super excited that we were able to plan a trip to the greater Chicago area to be out here at the Best Bauer Dunn Museum. 

25:44 - Speaker 7 (Host)
And one of the things I think I really appreciate. First of all, this amazingly gorgeous artwork. Samantha Gallagher has done an incredible job and you all need to follow her on Instagram because this artwork is spectacular. But I'm appreciating the sense of humor with which all of the Cicada information is presented, as well as just how accessible it is. Even if you're not Cicada-obsessed like we are, you will find this information really easy to use and be able to share with folks around you. 

26:18 - Speaker 5 (Host)
I would hope people would walk away with an appreciation and understanding of cicadas and also a love for the mature trees that cicadas need to perpetuate their existence and they're preserving that. 

26:32 - Speaker 7 (Host)
So I think, with that being said, it's time for us to go look at some more cicadas. 

26:37 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So right now, as we're walking into Ryerson, I've got to say the cicadas are pretty subtle, but we're not deep in the woods yet. So one of the things we're looking for today as we're walking are signs of egg laying, and we're looking for potentially different eye colors as well. 

27:04 - Speaker 2 (Host)
That is poison ivy. Look at all the exoskeletons on poison ivy, and cicadas too. They must not be sensitive. 

27:11 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and we noticed yesterday that they seem to really like the poison ivy. Yeah, maybe that's one way of keeping certain predators, aka humans, away from them by is the sheer number that are attached to the leaves coming out from the tree trunk. 

27:32 - Speaker 3 (Host)
That is another poison, ivy vine, I believe, or Virginia creeper. 

27:39 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I wonder why they're so interested in attaching there. Maybe it's easier to get purchased than on the tree itself? 

27:44 - Speaker 2 (Host)
Well and uh, the adults also drink. Well, the, the nymphs, are used to drinking the juices from the tree roots, and I would think it'd be easier to get juice just more like what they had in the womb, so to speak, than the actual tree limbs. 

28:04 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So the womb would be down here underground correct, right, and so the roots? 

28:09 - Speaker 2 (Host)
they're just drinking the fluids from the roots, so it's probably easier to drink fluids, especially if you're young and tender. I'm just guessing. 

28:25 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
What are we listening for? 

28:27 - Speaker 3 (Host)
We're listening for the alarm-like car alarm-like noise of one of the varieties of cicadas. Every cicada species has its own call. 

28:40 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So we just found our first cicada inside Ryerson. And what do we think? On the top it kind of looks like the Cassini's we've seen. Right, that's true that's true. 

28:52 - Speaker 3 (Host)
It's all going to depend on what we see underneath. Are we going to see all black or are we going to see yellowish gold stripes? Let me see. 

29:00 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Come on, buddy, she does not. I'm pretty sure it's a she and she is being very stubborn. There we go. Can you see underneath? 

29:10 - Speaker 3 (Host)
there, sure can, and it is definitely a she. And you see those golden yellow bands. 

29:15 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
that would be what diane, a septum decent, and look at, just look at those beautiful wings. Can you see how they're closed together? 

29:25 - Speaker 3 (Host)
they're just so beautiful and opalescent they very instinctively want to crawl up, up, up, up up, which is what they're doing in these trees. There you go. The septum decims, unlike the cassinis, have the yellowish gold stripes on underneath, but they also. Their wings are spread out just a little bit more. They're not so much in a tight point. 

29:52 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So here you can actually see the difference between the Cassini and the Septim Decim. If you look right here that's the Cassini and she's small. You can see that she's teeny, tiny. She's not making noise. The noise we hear in the background are the boy cicadas and she's got, she's all black on her underbelly, whereas over here that's the Septim Decim and she's very wiggly right now. But you can see her aviposter and again not making noise, and you can see the kind of goldish, brown stripes on her abdomen as well. So that's a really cool side by side. So if we look at these two you can see that there's a difference even between them. The one right over here has the skinnier bands and then the one over here has got much wider bands of sort of that brownish gold, and we think that what's the one with the narrower bands name Is that the septum decim, decim, decula, septum decula, and decula is the one that we think is making the car alarm noises, although we've seen nothing but girls. 

31:08
The boys we've only heard in the trees and seen flying above us. Very cool, we finally us. Very cool, we finally found a boy. Listen to him purr and we're pretty sure this is a septum decim. Because of the skinny bands on the underbelly or the abdomen Sounds like a teeny, tiny motor. 

31:36 - Speaker 3 (Host)
Here we are on the last 24 hours of our trip and I think it's safe to say we have found all three magic cicadas of the species that are around this greater Chicago area. 

31:48 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And those are all members of brood 13. So we just hit a really loud pocket today. These are hitting in the 84 decibel range, which is more like a small appliance. Hey Lynn, take a look at this one. This one appears to be one-eyed. 

32:20 - Speaker 2 (Host)
So my guess would be that a squirrel or a bird had itself a tasty little caviar-like snack. They can function without either of their eyes. That's really cool. Remember, cicadas only live in this form, in their adult form, for one to four weeks, after living underground in another form for 17 years. 

32:41 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So they need the durable form for down below. 

32:44 - Speaker 2 (Host)
Yeah, all right. 

32:47 - Speaker 3 (Host)
So this is evidence of the fungus that affects cicadas and you see this white chalky mass that takes the place of their lower abdomen. Basically their butts fall off. But because of the hallucinogenic and the amphetamine that's in the fungus. The cicada doesn't realize it and continues to fly around and spread the fungus continues to fly around and spread the fungus. 

33:21 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So when they do that? 

33:22 - Speaker 2 (Host)
are they sort of inoculating the rest? 

33:22 - Speaker 3 (Host)
of the population. They're definitely. That's how it spreads. Some people call it zombie fungus, and so, but the amount of the drugs that are in their system? You'd have to eat hundreds of cicadas. 

33:36 - Speaker 2 (Host)
You or your dog before it would negatively infect you. So this is something that just affects cicadas. 

33:43 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So thank you for joining us on this amazing cicada adventure You've now had one two and three opportunities to learn all about cicadas, from Dr Jean Kritsky, the Indiana Jones of the cicada world, to our podcast where we looked at picture books about cicadas. We looked at stem steam activities and entomography, and then the real life adventure where we've traveled with the cicadas. 

34:13 - Speaker 2 (Host)
Here's to the next 17 years. 

34:19 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
You've been listening to the Adventures in Learning podcast with your host, Dr Diane. If you like what you're hearing, please subscribe, download and let us know what you think, and please tell a friend. If you want the full show notes and the pictures, please go to drdianeadventurescom. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.