Croplands - Biodiversity for a Livable Climate

What insect spends years hidden underground, preparing for a brief but spectacular emergence into the sunlight, filling the air with the deafening, iconic song of summer?

The cicada (Cicadoidea)!

Sub Alpine Green Cicada (Image Credit: Julie via iNaturalist)

Every time I return to the south of France, there’s one sound that immediately signals to me that summer has arrived—the unmistakable hum of cicadas. Their chorus, loud and unrelenting, fills the air in the warm Mediterranean heat and acts as a personal cue to pause, take a breath, and unwind. For me, it’s not just the start of summer; it’s the sound of nostalgia, the reminder of countless days spent hiking through the pine forests, picnicking under the shade of olive trees, or simply soaking in peaceful serenity at the beach. The cicadas’ song is always complemented by the sweet, earthy smell of ripening figs. It’s a sensory symphony that epitomizes the region’s charm.

These moments, marked by the rhythmic buzz of cicadas, offer a unique connection to nature—one that I’ve come to cherish as a deeply rooted part of my experience in the region. The cicadas’ song is a call to slow down, reconnect, and embrace the simple beauty of life in the south of France.

As much as these personal experiences have shaped my connection to cicadas, there’s so much more to learn about these fascinating creatures. From their complex life cycles to the essential roles they play in ecosystems around the world, cicadas are much more than the soundtrack of summer.

The Backstory

If the name “cicada” doesn’t quite ring a bell, you might recognize it from Animal Crossing. It’s a common insect that players can encounter in the game.

Cicadas are the loudest insect species in the world, known for their buzzing and clicking noises, typically sung during the day. This song, produced by males to attract females, is a highly specialized mating call. Each species of cicada has its own unique variation, which is genetically inherited rather than learned, unlike the calls of other animals such as birds. Some cicada species, like the double drummer, even group together to amplify their calls, deterring predatory birds by overwhelming them with noise. Others adapt by singing at dusk, avoiding the attention of daytime predators.

If you’re curious about the fascinating science behind how cicadas create their iconic sound and want to dive deeper into their unique anatomy, I highly recommend checking out the following video. It’s a captivating look at how these incredible insects make their music!

But there’s more to cicadas than their songs. If you’ve ever tried to catch one, you might have discovered their quirky behavior firsthand—cicadas pee when they fly! This “cicada rain” is simply their way of excreting excess liquid after consuming large amounts of plant sap. While it’s harmless, it’s something to keep in mind if you’re ever under a tree full of buzzing cicadas—or reaching out to grab one!

With more than 3,000 species worldwide, cicadas are primarily found in temperate and tropical climates, avoiding regions with extreme cold. Their life cycle consists of three stages: egg, nymph, and adult. After hatching, nymphs burrow underground and feed on plant root sap for years before emerging, molting, and transforming into adults.

Watching a cicada emerge from its nymphal shell is like witnessing a miniature metamorphosis in real-time—its delicate wings unfurling as it prepares to take flight. If you’ve never seen this magical process, here’s a fascinating video that brings it to life.

While most species are annual cicadas, emerging every year, some, like the periodical cicadas of North America, emerge every 13 or 17 years. These synchronized groups are referred to as “broods.” A brood consists of all the cicadas of the same lifecycle group that emerge in a specific year within a particular geographical area. This classification system helps scientists and enthusiasts track and study the various populations of periodical cicadas.

These mass events, involving millions of cicadas, are a marvel of nature and the unique cycle remains a topic of scientific curiosity. In exceptionally rare cases, two different broods can emerge simultaneously, creating a spectacle of overlapping generations. This video explains more about these extraordinary dual emergence events and why they capture the fascination of entomologists and nature enthusiasts alike.

Showstoppers: Stunning Species from Around the World

Across the globe, these fascinating insects showcase an incredible range of colors, patterns, and sizes, rivaling even the most vibrant creatures of the animal kingdom. Here’s a look at some standout species that prove cicadas are as much visual marvels as they are auditory icons:

**Tacua speciosa**: Native to Southeast Asia, *Tacua speciosa* is among the largest cicadas, boasting a black body with a striking yellow or chartreuse pronotal collar and cyan or yellow tergites and shimmering blue-green wings. Found in Southeast Asia, this giant cicada commands attention not just with its size but with its bold elegance.
(Image Credit: Valentinus-Tikhonov via iNaturalist)

**Zammara Smaragdina**: Found in tropical regions, this species stuns with its bright turquoise coloration, a rare hue in the insect world that gives it a truly jewel-like appearance.
(Image Credit: Benoît Guillon via iNaturalist)

**Salvazana mirabilis imperialis**: This species, found in Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, displays an amazing blend of greens and reds on their wings.
(Image Credit: xtbg-eec via iNaturalist)

Cicadas vs. Locusts: Clearing Up the Confusion

Cicadas are often mistaken for locusts, a confusion that dates back to early European colonists who likened the sudden mass emergence of cicadas to the biblical plagues of locusts. However, cicadas and locusts are very different insects with distinct behaviors and ecological impacts.

Locusts, a type of grasshopper, are infamous for forming destructive swarms that can devastate crops and vegetation, causing severe agricultural damage. In contrast, cicadas do not consume foliage in a way that harms plants or crops. While their synchronized emergences can be dramatic, cicadas are not considered pests and pose no threat to agriculture.

Cicadas’ Impact: How They Shape the Ecosystem

Cicadas play a crucial role in maintaining ecosystem balance at every stage of their life cycle. During their subterranean nymph stage, they engage in burrowing activities that profoundly impact soil structure and health. By creating tunnels, they aerate the soil, facilitating root respiration and improving water infiltration, which enhances soil moisture distribution. Their burrowing also redistributes nutrients, mixing organic matter and minerals from different soil layers, which boosts soil fertility and supports plant growth.

These tunnels also provide microhabitats for other soil organisms, such as insects, microorganisms, and invertebrates, fostering biodiversity. Upon their emergence, adult cicadas become a vital food source for various predators, such as birds, mammals, and reptiles, boosting the survival and reproduction of these species.

When cicadas die, their decomposing bodies enrich the soil with nutrients, stimulating microbial activity and increasing the diversity of soil microarthropod communities (Microarthropods are like miniature insects such as springtails or soil mites). This nutrient flux improves plant productivity and even impacts the dynamics of woodland ponds and streams, underscoring their importance in nutrient cycling.

Cicadas as Ecological Signals: What They Tell Us About Nature

Cicadas are valuable bioindicators, reflecting the health of their environments. As root feeders, their abundance can tell us a lot about the integrity of root systems and the availability of water and nutrients. Cicadas also require well-structured, uncompacted soil to create their burrows, making their presence an indicator of healthy soil conditions.

The Cicada-MET protocol, which involves counting cicada exuviae (shed skins), offers a standardized method to assess environmental quality. Additionally, acoustic methods to analyze their songs are used to study the impacts of disturbances like wildfires and can guide conservation strategies.

Challenges Facing Cicadas: The Threats to Their Survival

Cicadas face various threats that jeopardize their populations and the ecosystems they support. Habitat loss due to urbanization is a significant challenge, as forests and grasslands are replaced with buildings and infrastructure, reducing the availability of suitable

environments for their life cycles. Planting native trees, preserving green spaces, and advocating for wildlife-friendly urban planning are simple but effective ways to help restore their habitats. For example, oak, pine, and olive trees in Mediterranean areas, or sycamore and dogwood in North America, are ideal choices. Climate change is another major threat, particularly in regions like Provence, where extreme heat waves can suppress cicada singing and disrupt mating behaviors, potentially forcing them to migrate to cooler areas, altering both new ecosystems and those they leave behind.. Additionally, some cicada species are vulnerable to invasive pathogens, such as fungi like Massospora cicadina, which manipulate their behavior and spread infections. While this fungus predominantly affects periodical cicadas, similar threats could arise for other species. If you have the opportunity, I would recommend participating in citizen science projects to report sightings of infected cicadas and track population health.

A Month of Delight

Cicadas have a way of sparking curiosity and creativity in those who encounter them. Whether it’s collecting their delicate, shed exoskeletons to study, transforming them into art, or pausing to listen to their summer chorus, these insects invite us to engage more deeply with the natural world. By paying closer attention to creatures like cicada’s, we can gain a greater appreciation for their fascinating life cycles, and develop a stronger connection to the ecosystem that sustains them.

Naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre once said, “Four years of hard work in the darkness, and a month of delight in the sun––such is the Cicada’s life, We must not blame him for the noisy triumph of his song.” By understanding and appreciating these extraordinary creatures, we can ensure their songs—and the inspiration they bring—continue to resonate for generations to come.

Lakhena

Lakhena Park holds degrees in Public Policy and Human Rights Law but has recently shifted her focus toward sustainability, ecosystem restoration, and regenerative agriculture. Passionate about reshaping food systems, she explores how agroecology and land management practices can restore biodiversity, improve soil health, and build resilient communities. She is currently preparing to pursue a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) to deepen her understanding of regenerative practices. Fun fact: Pigs are her favorite farm animal—smart, playful, and excellent at turning soil, they embody everything she loves about regenerative farming.

Sources and Further Reading:

What’s usually purple, but sometimes pink,
and in the summer you might want it in a drink?

Lavender! (Lavandula)

(Image Credit: edededen via iNaturalist)

Already baking in the high desert heat, I rolled up a gravel driveway past yucca and prickly pear cacti to Mesa Verde Lavender, the farm in Mancos, Colorado, where I was to spend my summer living and working. I didn’t know much about the plant other than that it smelled good, tasted a little soapy, and that I was potentially allergic to it (luckily, I was wrong about this one).

Over the next three months, I would learn a lot about the lavender, how to plant it, care for it, and harvest it. On a lazy mid-June day, when the first buds of the flower had begun to blossom, the most mature field was full of flowers with tiny white buds springing from their stems. It was as if all of the color had been leached from their little buds. That is how I stumbled upon the existence of pink lavender, the Miss Katherine cultivar.

Miss Katherine in Colorado (Photo by Author)

Miss Katherine was the first variety to bloom on the farm, with a blooming period from early June to late August.

Lavender is a genus (Lavandula) of flowering plants known for its beauty and its fragrant oils. Lavender plants typically have long, slender stems with narrow leaves, and their flowers are generally in shades of purple, blue, or violet—though when I first laid eyes on them in Colorado, they were a dusty white. And while they certainly taste different, Lavender is in great aromatic company as part of the mint family (Lamiaceae), sharing several biological traits with its “fresh” relative like square stems and opposite leaves.

Originating in the Mediterranean, Lavender prefers hot sunshine and more alkaline, or basic, soils (less acidic clay soils with a higher pH), making them strong and hardy plants, perfect for the high altitude desert farm in Colorado where I worked with them.

(Image Credit: Nikolett Emmert via Pexels)

Bees?

Trendy chefs and mixologists aren’t the only ones working lavender into their meals. The plant’s flowers are rich in nectar and pollen, making them highly attractive to pollinators like bees and butterflies too. These pollinators are critical allies in the lavender’s reproductive process, transferring pollen between flowers to facilitate fertilization. Lavender flowers typically bloom during the summer, providing an important food source for pollinators and other feasting friends.

Now, lavender plants can self-pollinate. But they thrive with the help of birds, bees, the wind, and others to spread their pollen to other, genetically diverse, lavender. And although many insects interact with lavender, none do it quite like bees. Interestingly, not all bees contribute equally; some species engage in what is known as “nectar robbing,” or extracting nectar without transferring pollen. But not the bumblebee. These highly efficient pollinators use their long tongues to access nectar more effectively, enabling them to forage lavender three times faster than honeybees. That’s good news for the bee. And their fuzzy bodies collect and transfer pollen efficiently between flowers, promoting successful cross-pollination. That’s good news for the lavender.

There’s no denying it – lavender has a delicate aura about it. It’s decorative. It embellishes carefully plated meals. It’s a favorite of nearly every kind of scented product you can think of. But don’t let that image fool you. It’s one tough cookie, and this was something that really fascinated me when I dug into learning about the plant. I see it a little differently now. Lavender has evolved several adaptations that allow it to thrive in harsher environments. It is drought-resistant and capable of surviving in well-drained soils with low fertility. The plant’s deep, robust root system enables it to pull moisture from the soil, even in periods of low rainfall. It’s this ability to endure dry conditions that makes lavender well-suited for Mediterranean climates, where hot, dry summers are kind of the norm.

Essential Oils

During the Colorado harvest, my fingers grew stickier with each strike of the scythe against the plant’s stems. A delicious-smelling substance that oozing from within the lavender and onto my hands. This was the essential oil.

Essential oils are concentrated compounds extracted from plants, and they tend to capture each plant’s unique scent and natural chemical properties. They’re commercially valuable in numerous human applications, including aromatherapy, skincare, and medicinal and culinary uses.

Miss Katherine hanging to dry (photo by author)

Essential oil is present in all parts of the lavender plant, including the leaves, buds, and stems (hence my sticky hands).

The Miss Katherine lavender is the most commonly used lavender variety for essential oil production, due to its low camphor content. Camphor is a naturally occurring compound in essential oils with a bitter taste and strong smell—not something you’d want on your plant or in your candle. Other lavender varieties, such as Lavandula stoechas and Lavandula lanata, have higher camphor levels, making them better suited for natural bug repellents and other less cosmetic or edible applications.

Scientists still don’t fully understand the natural purpose of essential oils in plants. Some oils are thought to be byproducts of metabolic processes, while others could play a role in defense against disease and predators. Lavender plants are thought to be allelopathic—capable of releasing chemicals that inhibit the growth of surrounding plants. This can help lavender outcompete invasive species. But on the flip side, planting lavender in an environment where it doesn’t belong can lead to inhibition of native plants and, ultimately, a loss of biodiversity.

After the harvest, bundles of lavender are hung upside down to dry for a couple days, after which the buds are stripped from the stems, contained in jars, and sent out to market. At Mesa Verde Lavender, the farm delivered a mixture of Miss Katherine, Provance, and Royal Velvet to a local ice cream shop, where the lavender was whipped into delicious gourmet ice cream and served to the community of Durango, Colorado.

Helena Venzke-Kondo is a student at Smith College pursuing psychology, education, and environmental studies. She is particularly interested in conversation psychology and the reciprocal relationship between people and nature. Helena is passionate about understanding how communities are impacted by climate change and what motivates people towards environmental action. In her free time, she loves to crochet, garden, drink tea, and tend to her houseplants.

Sources and Further Reading:

Creature: Croplands

Featured Creature: Cicada