ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — Illinois is expected to be at the center of a rare event as billions of cicadas emerge this spring.
In 2024, the Midwest is expected to see the result of two cicada broods: one that comes out from underground every 13 years and another every 17 years.
Entomologists predict the event will occur from Illinois to Virginia between April and June.
The two broods, Brood XIX and Brood XIII last emerged simultaneously in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president.
“It’s like a graduating class that has a reunion every 17 or 13 years,” Gene Kritsky, professor emeritus of biology at Mount St. Joseph University, told NPR.
The last time Brood XIII, or The Northern Illinois Brood, emerged, in 2007, “they were out in such abundant numbers that Chicagoans were having to remove them with shovels, to clear sidewalks and roads,” according to entomologist Floyd Shockley, with the National Museum of Natural History.
The insects are expected to leave the soil once the temperature reaches 64 degrees.
Once they do, the males will shed their skins and begin to produce a chorus to attract females to mate.
Shockley said their appearance makes for an “extremely rare, once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Cicadas live about four to six weeks, but the two broods will overlap for several weeks in Illinois, experts said. The greatest likelihood of contact between them will likely be around Springfield, scientists say, which could lead to cross-species mating and the creation of a new brood.
Jonathan Larson, an extension entomologist at the University of Kentucky, described the event to NPR as a unique, beautiful spectacle of nature that can’t be seen anywhere else in the world.
By: John Clark
