Cicada Life And Death The Dangers Of Adult Cicada Life Cycle - Ants

Описание: In Australia we have Christmas during Summer, we also enjoy the beautiful and noisy Cicada's during the festive season. This year it's a massive Cicada season and my young son is getting to know these harmless creatures which only live for a few weeks as adults. But this adult life cycle can also be deadly as this exposes them to many threats from other insects and animals. In nature it's survival of the fittest, one little mistake can lead to certain death. But with death come life for another, the ants will survive on a fresh meal of Cicada which became entangled when emerging from it's nymph shell.

Cicadas alternatively spelled as Cicala or Cicale, are insects in the order Hemiptera, suborder Auchenorrhyncha (which was formerly included in the now invalid suborder Homoptera). Cicadas are in the superfamily Cicadoidea. Their eyes are prominent, though not especially large, and set wide apart on the anterior lateral corners of the frons. The wings are well-developed, with conspicuous veins; in some species the wing membranes are wholly transparent, whereas in many others the proximal parts of the wings are clouded or opaque and some have no significantly clear areas on their wings at all. About 2,500 species of cicada have been described, and many remain to be described. Cicadas live in temperate-to-tropical climates where they are among the most-widely recognized of all insects, mainly due to their large size and unique sound. Cicadas are often colloquially called locusts, although they are unrelated to true locusts, which are various species of swarming grasshopper. Cicadas are related to leafhoppers and spittlebugs.

Cicadas are benign to humans under normal circumstances and do not bite or sting in a true sense, but may mistake a person's arm or other part of their body for a tree or plant limb and attempt to feed. Cicadas have a long proboscis, under their head, which they insert into plant stems in order to feed on sap. It can be painful if they attempt to pierce a person's skin with it, but it is unlikely to cause other harm. It is unlikely to be a defensive reaction and is a rare occurrence. It usually only happens when they are allowed to rest on a person's body for an extended amount of time. Cicadas can cause damage to several cultivated crops, shrubs, and trees, mainly in the form of scarring left on tree branches while the females lay their eggs deep in branches. Many people around the world regularly eat cicadas. They are known to have been eaten in Ancient Greece as well as China, Malaysia, Burma, Latin America, and the Congo. Female cicadas are prized for being meatier. Shells of cicadas are employed in the traditional medicines of China.

Web Links ;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomology

Below is a link to a must watch short film about a Cicadas life cycle

Return of the Cicadas : http://vimeo.com/66688653

The video Return of the Cicadas is a film produced by Samuel Orr, he's a natural history film maker who has a very special interest in time lapse photography. He's perfectly suited to studying a Cicadas life cycle.

http://returnofthecicadas.com/