Winter storm, limbs down, energy out, blame the cicadas? — Bug of the Week

Nicely, a cabal of cicada specialists met final week to assessment the science behind the scenario. Within the first complete assessment of periodical cicada biology, printed in 1907, cicada knowledgeable C. L. Marlatt famous that “The a part of the plant chosen for a receptacle for the eggs is sort of invariably the twigs of the earlier 12 months’s progress.”  A later examine by entomologists Fred Miller and Webster Crowley on greater than 100 frequent shade bushes reveled that periodical cicadas laid eggs in twigs ranging in dimension from ~4 mm to 11 mm (~ ⅛ to ½ inch) in diameter. Take a look at a number of the pictures that accompany this narrative and you will notice that the branches which turned brown or snapped and fell beneath bushes because of cicada egg-laying, are small diameter twigs at most a number of toes lengthy. Even with a load of heavy snow it’s extremely unlikely that these small twigs could be heavy sufficient to interrupt a transmission line.

Did periodical cicadas trigger some harm to unprotected bushes rising in orchards, shade tree nurseries, and landscapes? Certainly cicadas trigger some injury, however are they accountable for the widespread energy outages related to final week’s storms? Nah, this one belongs to Mom Nature having a little bit of enjoyable with our city infrastructure.