This spring, periodic cicada brood XIII, in the Midwest, and periodic cicada brood XIX, across the Southeast, will emerge together for the first time in 200 years. Unlike annual cicadas, which are noisy but are otherwise shrugged off as a minor nuisance, periodic cicada broods can be deafening and pose some significant problems.
While they do not bite and are not poisonous, they can cause vegetation damage. Domestic pets can develop intestinal obstruction if they consume too many of these tasty insects and humans can be injured if they slip on the decaying carcasses. But the cicadas offer a windfall of nutrition for many birds and mammals and, in death, return nutrients to the soil and plants.
Brood XIII, 17-year cicadas, hatched in 2007, while brood XIX are 13-year cicadas that hatched in 2011. The hatchlings drop from the trees in which their eggs were laid and burrow into the soil; finding a rootlet, they spend almost all of their life in the dark, drawing nutrition from that appendage. When the larvae finally emerge, they crawl up a tree trunk and molt to their adult stage; adults, which do not feed, live only long enough to attract mates (hence the noise), mate and lay eggs.
