National Geographic News - Daniel Stone - March 29, 2013
Every 17 years, millions of cicadas fill the sky to mate—this is the year.
The cicada brood scheduled to emerge from underground this year could contain millions of individuals. Photograph by Karen Kasmauski, Corbis
Periodical cicadas (Magicicada septendecim), the cousins of katydids and crickets, have a unique breeding schedule, and after 17 years of living underground, a large group of them are preparing to fill the skies along the U.S. East Coast, from North Carolina up to Connecticut.
Normally, periodic cicadas spend their lives in complete darkness underground, sucking the fluid out of the roots of trees and shrubs. At the end of their life, they emerge, breed, and almost instantly die, completing a lifecycle that humans have studied for centuries.
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