Cicada Collectors: Donate Your Finds to Science

After months of anticipation, those on the East Coast are being greeted en masse by cicadas, as the generation known as Brood II emerges from 17 years of sleep.

Now, aside from eating and the 101-thousand other things stand-up reporters have suggested folks can do with the crunchy morsels, cicada collectors have the opportunity to contribute to scientific exploration.

Entomologists at the University of Georgia are asking for the public's help to research and better map the range of the country's cicada population.

The undulating song of thousands, nay, millions of cicadas --- which sound like a cross between a giant snake and a never-ending maraca riff --- is currently reverberating from southern Appalachia to Connecticut.

"If you've never been to an area where they are emerging, it is something," said Richard Hoebeke, an associate curator for arthropods at the Georgia Museum of Natural History. "These things are flying everywhere and the noise they make is just terrific."

University researchers are asking Georgians near and far to collect any intact cicada bodies they find send them to the museum, which maintains an international collection of cicadas ranging in size from smaller than the fingernail on one's pinkie to some from Southeast Asia that easily measure the size of a human hand palm.

The collection as well boasts cicada specimens of all colors and examples of several 13- and 17-year periodical cicadas broods, including some critters who invaded the countryside back to the 1930s.

Yet, at the moment, the museum doesn't sport any Brood II cicadas from Georgia --- which are needed to "help us document this emergence in Georgia," Hoebeke said.

So, when people find cicada carcass, the first think they should do is note when and where they made their find and then ship the bodies with as much of the collection data as possible to the museum.

Whole specimens will be added to the museum's collection of arthropods, which spans hundreds of thousands of individual insects and spiders.

Georgians can recognize periodical cicadas from the annual cicadas that come out every summer by looking at the insects' eyes. Only the periodical cicadas have red eyes.

Also, while the annual cicadas emerge comparatively late into the summer and peak in August and September, the periodical cicadas usually only buzz around up until July in Georgia, before they all die out.

Members of the public who'd like to contribute to the museum's cicada drive are asked to send the deceased insects to Richard Hoebeke, Georgia Museum of Natural History, Natural History Building, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, 30602-7882.