Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
This is the year of the cicadas in southwest Ohio.
Brood X is scheduled to emerge to mate and lay eggs in southwest Ohio, impacting the Dayton area, in May and June said Don Cipollini, a professor of biological sciences at Wright State University. A brood is a large population of cicadas that emerges around the same time.
Other broods have emerged at other times around Ohio. The last time Brood X emerged was 2004. Brood X will also emerge in parts of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina. These black cicadas with red eyes are different from the annual cicadas that emerge in late summer that are green with yellow eyes.
“They’re really a kind of a wild spectacle of nature,” Cipollini said.
There are so many of them as a species survival strategy, he said. These insects are clunky fliers and easy prey. But if billions of them show up, even if millions get eaten, there are still plenty of cicadas left over to mate and lay eggs again.
