It isn’t Summer if you don’t hear them!

Recently, I was offered the chance to assess the health of the cicadas of my country and use this knowledge for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species…

Let me give you all a heads-up. The Red List is an awesome endeavor that voices the scientists works onto a broader and more political bubbles, making conservationists life somewhat easier. My immediate response: LET’S GET TO WORK!

I skimmed along the list looking for any threatened or vulnerable cicadas, but none to be found… Here in Portugal, we have listed, as of 2004, 13 species of cicadas. None have yet been assessed… And if you ever been to Algarve during the Summer, you can understand the title! Cicadas make lots of noise during the day, and, in Algarve, the likely culprit is Cicada orni, below for your viewing and sounding pleasure!

Me and four other colleagues make up The Cicada Group at the Faculty of Sciences of Lisbon and these past summer months we have been hard at work mapping these 13 species… And let me tell you, it has not been easy! The season was very irregular with lots of rain and wind and cold and cloudy days! Cicadas HATE this weather and are completely mute… Making our job next to impossible! When we are in the field we go by their sound… Gently, we approach the star of the show so as not to surprise it…A cicada can be singing two feet in front of you and it will a feat trying to even see it in the vegetation! Then we swing our nets hoping to see the cicada caught… But nope… It will keep singing on another hidden perch… Now without the calling song, can you even imagine?! Like bats with earmuffs!

But, we pulled through! Of the all the species, we recorded 12, leaving only a species behind for next year! We updated their distributions, expanding some territories, but on many cases reducing. And it’s disheartening… On some cases well-known and healthy populations have been paved over to build malls, housing or supermarkets to feed the tourist influx during the Summer; on other cases wildfires that have left Portugal burnt may have affected cicada populations in an unpredictable way. And this is yet another hurdle… Cicadas generally live three years (some up to 17!!!) below ground and the adult for about two to three weeks. All the aspects of the cicadas’ life are derived from the adults and we know next to nothing from 99.9% of the rest of their life.

This is what makes my work even more thrilling and exciting! We need to invent new ways to study these critters – even with the lack-of-funds ghost looming above our heads – and it rewards us in the most surprising ways, with the “Uh… That’s funny…” moment, we scientists crave! Have you got cicadas in your country? Have you ever seen a cicada? How about your work? What do you love – and hate – about it? Let’s discuss it below in the comments!