wear thick panties just in case

After I graduated few years ago, I was working at a national park and living in a beautiful country house out in the middle of a Louisiana cornfield. It was a historic home, built in the 1840’s. I’d crawl into bed each night, surrounded by memories of generations of Creole culture. It was a beautiful experience. But one thing about a rural Louisiana home in the summer: bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.

Bugs are not beloved animals. Of course, there are entomologists and naturalists who find friends amongst the arthropods. And then there are the moth-loving Buffalo Bill types (it puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again). But most people either feel unkindly towards or downright terrified by our jointed, exoskeleton-bearing cousins. Spiders don’t bug me so much (see what I did there?), but put a roach or flying insect in my room, and I will immediately start crying like a girl. I appreciate them when viewed through glass or in a book, but for the love of all that is holy, keep them away from me.

I was climbing into bed in my little summer home one night, exhausted and ready to konk out. All of the sudden, a horrible, stinging pain hit my right ass cheek. I flew out of bed, and lo and behold: a red wasp was buzzing around the bed. It had crawled in between my sheets and was waiting for my bare hiney to climb into bed before stinging the living daylights out of it. I couldn’t sit for 24 hours after that horrible incident.

(Wikicommons)

Not long after that, I was reading before bed when “buzzzz buzzzz,” a humongous, black, loud, fast, and terrifying cicada started flying around the house. I mustered up all my courage to approach the beast with a broom. I tried to beat it to death- didn’t work. So I cornered it and drenched it in wasp spray. The monster subdued, and certain that it was dead, I put it in the trash. I fell asleep soundly, knowing the nightmare was over.

Sometime during the middle of the night, I was stirred awake by a sound that struck terror in my heart. The beast was somehow still alive, making its sound from inside the trashcan. Panicked, I put the entire trashcan outside on the porch, locked the door, got back into bed, and put a pillow over my head. Rocking back and forth in fetal position was not enough to put me to sleep that night.

Since then, I’ve felt a little guilty about my behavior towards this cicada. I’ve learned a little more about them since. They aren’t so bad. Yes, they still strike fear into my heart, but it’s not their fault. And their calls are perhaps one of the most comforting sounds in the world to me- it takes me back to porch-sitting, sweet-tea drinking, ceiling-fan spinning summer sunsets back home.

One particular genus of cicada has a fascinating lifecycle. Magicicada lays its eggs in tree bark. After a few weeks, the little nymphs crawl out of the nests, down the trees, and underground, where they stay for 17 years. In the soil, they spend their time maturing into adults. Long, sub-terrenean incubation periods are not uncommon for cicadas, but Magicadas are special because theirs are synchronized. This means that instead of a batch emerging each year, each generation emerges at the same time. For a few weeks, this huge population of newly emerged adults breeds like crazy and then dies. When you figure in the 17-year incubation period, it means that every 17 years, a huge emergence of horny cicadas occurs. And folks, 2013 is one of those years.

Mmmmm.

In a few weeks, the eastern seaboard will be covered with Magicicadas of the Brood II (several colonies, or broods exist across the United States). My good friend from Virginia enlightened me to the hipster culture surrounding this occurrence. She told me that people like to dare each other to eat them and that they taste like “cold, canned asparagus.” I know: oh my god.

What a strange event this seems, millions of bugs coming out of the ground all at once. Literally, all at once, in a single night. And so many! Densities have reached up to a million and a half PER ACRE. It’s truly a massive invasion. Why in the world would this genus of bugs have such a drastically different lifecycle from even its closest cicada relatives?

This is a strategy called predator satiation. You see, these cicadas are prey species. They are eaten by birds, raccoons, spiders, lizards, you name it. But by occurring in such massive bursts, predation can’t put much of a dent in their numbers. Predators can eat until they can’t fit another bug in their mouths and the Magicicada population is relatively untouched. Predators love these kinds of reproductive events- they absolutely gorge themselves, eating until they are in a stupor. Other animals exhibit this sort of reproductive strategy in coordination with predation (salmon runs satiate bears), but this Magicicada business is truly extreme.

Can you imagine being a Magicicada? You spend seventeen years growing underground, only to emerge for a few weeks to have sex and then die. I mean, it seems more reasonable for things like gnats, whose entire life spans no more than a matter of days. But an insect, living longer than your average dog, and accomplishing no more than reproduction during that span is remarkable.

Here’s to wishing the Magicicada Brood II luck in its impending emergence. They may be kind of icky, but bugs are really cool. That being said, I hope there is not a wasp, or a cicada for that matter, waiting in your bed for you tonight. Wear thick panties just in case.

Here’s a great, interpretive website that can tell you more about these little suckers.

http://www.magicicada.org/magicicada_ii.php

a delicious anomoly

Somebody's lame (but oh-so-comfy) shoes and socks

What is your reproductive strategy? Are you the jerk with the popped collar who hits on every girl ever, knowing that with an increased sample size comes increased odds of taking one home? Maybe you’re the sassy lady who dresses to the nines to increase visibility of your secondary sexual characteristics (sexual traits other than the obvious one- like boobs). Maybe you have good intentions to be attractive but find yourself wearing “active casual shoes” with striped socks and high-water jeans to work and wonder what happened to your self respect.

Well, let me just go ahead and answer the question for you. You, PUNY HUMAN, have an iteroparous reproductive strategy.

Iteroparity and semelparity are the two main approaches life can take to reproduction. Semelparous organisms are usually short-lived and “put all their eggs in one basket,” if you will. They pool all their bodily resources into a single reproductive event and then die. Think about those clouds of gnats that buzz around in your yard during the summer. Those little gnats are just a few days old and are already having a giant orgy. After their thousands of eggs are fertilized and laid, the bugs’ tiny bodies are so exhausted and depleted that they die. Then just days later, their offspring emerge and the cycle starts again. This is semelparity.

Iteroparity (latin for “to beget repetitively”) is characterized by multiple reproductive events before death- ones that usually occur over a much longer time span. Almost all vertebrates are iterparous and invest only part of their physical resources towards gravidity, allowing them to live past each reproductive event and have future ones. Subsequently, iteroparous organisms have longer lifespans and experience more growth.

Of course, each strategy has its pros and cons. Semelparous events are usually so large that a single gnat will have more offspring in a single event than you, as an iterparious critter, ever will. Iterparous organisms generally live longer, experience more parental care, and grow larger; therefore they have increased fitness and odds of surviving the elements (gnat vs. human in high winds or something of the like).

I’ve been living in Alaska for a few months now and have become well acquainted with one of the foremost exceptions to the semelparity/iteroparity trends. The Pacific Salmon is a relatively large vertebrate with a fascinating reproductive cycle. First off, a little salmonlet hatches in a freshwater stream. The newborns hang around in their stream anywhere from a few months to a few years, depending on the species. During this time, 90% of them will die. When they have grown into little silver fishies, they swim down the streams and into the salty ocean, where they will spend up to five years swimming around and eating. During this time, they grow in size and sequester the nutrients that the ocean has to offer. After five or so years, it is time to do the hanky panky.

These incredible fish find their way back to the same spot on the shore from which they emerged as little tiny salmon years ago, with their destination being the original stream in which they were hatched. There, females lay eggs and males fertilize them and are responsible for defending the nests. Their bodies, ravaged from the long journey from the ocean and reproduction are physiologically spent. At this point, the fish begin to die.

When this sexy journey begins, the physiology of the fish changes into reproductive mode. This means they completely quit eating, and their bodies begin to consume reserves and tissue for energy. Some species undergo a color change- males becoming bright red to attract the lay-des, and their mouths changing so dramatically as to become hooked with a ferocious set of teeth. Aside from their bodies being energetically depleted, this new morphology is completely unsuitable for life in back the ocean. Any way you slice it, it is the end of the road for these fish.

Top: Sockeye salmon before reproductive journey
Bottom: Sockeye salmon during reproductive jounrey
(adfg.alaska.gov)

And there you have it- a single reproductive event before death. Semelparity. But in a vertebrate that devotes five years and hundreds of miles to becoming a 4 pound hunk of impressive fish! It is an anomaly. But it is a successful enough strategy to cause the yearly Pacific Salmon runs to be stable, repetitive, and critical cornerstones of coastal ecosystems of the great Northwest.

It seems as though the odds are stacked against these guys. They must overcome so many treacherous obstacles- not being eaten as an egg and surviving larval-hood, dodging the hungry predators of their natal streams, enduring 5 years in the perilous ocean, and then making the arduous journey back (without being caught by a bear or fly fisherman). But nonetheless, it works. Millions of years of natural selection and random chance have whittled what we see as statistically unlikely into a highly refined, highly adapted system.

AND, they taste really good. Especially when fresh. And with butter.