A Brood X cicada settles down for the evening in a small forest in Ferdinand, Ind., May 26, 2021. The cicadas only appear every 17 years to mate. The young burrow back into the ground to wait for another 17 years to pass before emerging to follow in their parents' footsteps. Staff photo by Denny Simmons
A Brood X cicada settles down for the evening in a small forest in Ferdinand, Ind., May 26, 2021. The cicadas only appear every 17 years to mate. The young burrow back into the ground to wait for another 17 years to pass before emerging to follow in their parents' footsteps. Staff photo by Denny Simmons
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EVANSVILLE — A couple weeks into the season when a group of cicadas called Brood X should be emerging from the ground and causing a ruckus, Evansville and the surrounding areas aren't hearing or seeing much.
The surrounding areas have yet to see a significant showing of the famed Brood X, who only appear once every 17 years to mate before burrowing back into the ground for the next nearly two decades.
"Historically, Southern Indiana has had the highest numbers of cicadas throughout the region," said Elizabeth Barnes, an exotic forest pest educator at Purdue University. But compared to 2004, experts monitoring them are seeing "anecdotally, slightly lower numbers than last time around."
She pointed to several possible reasons the Evansville area has so far experienced a dearth of cicadas: The timing, ground temperatures or environmental disruption.
"It could be that they just all haven't emerged yet in some places, or we could have lost cicadas," she said.
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Barnes said the Brood X cicadas are an "indicator species," meaning that even small changes in the environment may affect their population more substantially than other species, who may bounce back. They also tend to accumulate in wooded areas, in some cases making them more vulnerable to deforestation in the name of real estate developments or farming.
"We tend to see this kind of outsized effect, and that indicates to us that, 'OK, something's going on here we should look at this more closely,'" she said.
Much can change in 17 years, but even more minor changes such as landscaping and pesticide use can affect the snoozing cicada population.
In other cases, Brood X may still be waiting for the right soil conditions, Barnes said, which is when the soil eight inches below the surface reaches 64 degrees.
It is still early enough that things could dramatically change in our area. But if the next month or so passes uneventfully (in the insect world, anyway), it will be something experts closely study to determine exactly what happened.
More: Brood X: Summer weather is about to hit Indiana. It may 'jump start' the cicada emergence.
Barnes emphasized the importance of education on the cicadas. If they do eventually show up in greater numbers, people don't need to fear them. They don't bite or sting; they'll just make a lot of noise and feed off trees before retreating for another 17 years.
"They not really dangerous, and most trees will be perfectly fine from the cicada damage," Barnes said. "And it's over in a month and a half."
If you're not an insect aficionado, Barnes said, "you just have to endure it for a little while, and then they'll be gone."
"If you're someone like me who's very much into insects and loves them, now is really the time to kind of get out and start looking for them and getting pictures and things," she added.
For those types, Barnes recommended downloading a specialized app called Cicada Safari or using iNaturalist, a biodiversity database, to report sightings.
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