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The Dog Days of...Cicadas?

Written By: Ian Silvester

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 Arkansas 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 Arkansas 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:
• 妻友社区 Campus Green
• Campus Wildlife
• Cicadas
• Insect Behavior