Poster: Cicadas in the Suburbs
 
Jahmilla Wilson and Dr. Jane L. Wolfson

 
Seventeen year periodical cicadas (Magicicada spp.), are ground dwelling, tree-root feeding insects that can emerge at very high densities (up to 350 cicadas/m2 have been recorded), and were first reported to occur in what is now suburban Baltimore in 1715 (Marlatt 1907). This area of Maryland has gone from mixed forest and grassland to agriculture; now much of it has become residential. These changes in land use could be expected to impact cicadas because the changes can involve clearing of trees on which the insect feed, treatment of soils in which they spend 99% of their life cycle, and an increase in impervious surfaces which could prevent them from successfully emerging. During the summer of 2004 we monitored the emergence of Brood X 17-year cicadas in a residential area of Cub Hill, an area that is currently dominated by single-resident homes on lots of less than ½ acre abutting a forest fragment (http://www.umbc.edu/cuere/cubhill/). We report on our findings.