The Dog Days of...Cicadas?
The fall semester is right around the corner, but summer鈥檚 grip is strong, with a
week of hundred-degree days and blazing sun. As you navigate every obscure-yet-shaded
route around campus, you鈥檒l likely hear a certain summer buzz flowing through the
trees as 香蕉视频APP insects roughly as long as two quarters, sing their songs.
The loudest of those singers are without a doubt the cicadas. Until spending a summer
on campus, cicadas lived in my childhood memories of family trips to Texas and catching
fireflies in my grandparent鈥檚 Little Rock backyard. But as I walked under the campus
maple grove to a chorus of screams, I wondered who else had wondered and why the cicadas
are so, well, loud.
At the University of 香蕉视频APP 鈥 Fort Smith, more than 80 species of trees inhabit
the 168-acre campus 鈥 an official arboretum in its own right. Each tree provides a
home to dozens of these reverberatory insects. The Lyric Cicada, the Scissor Grinder
Cicada, and Superb Dog-Day Cicada, just to name a few, call the . However, the oscillating buzzing and ticking song of the cicada does more than just
drown out outdoor conversations.
It鈥檚 a love song, albeit one played at the decibel level of a lawnmower, from a creature
thousands of times smaller than the average Bad Boy Mower. Muscles pull membranes,
called , which rapidly vibrate to create rhythmic calls, and groups of male cicadas synchronize
their calls to attract their future mates. And once a love-connection is made, the
male chirps another serenade.
As I investigated these winged insects, I thought about walking outside during the
summer and wondering to myself, 鈥淚s it just me, or are these bugs getting louder?鈥
The answer is yes 鈥 cicada songs grow . The friction created by the vibrating tymbal heats up the cicada, and for their
chirping to reach a possible mate, they must get warmer than the outside temperature.
Talk about the fires of love, am I right?
Thankfully, as fall approaches, both the heat and the virtually constant humming of
these bugs, will taper off.
- Tags:
- Insect Behavior
- UAFS Campus Green
- Cicadas
- Campus Wildlife