By Dan Klepal
The Cincinnati Enquirer

These are the best of times for cicadas.

SPECIAL SECTION

• Cicada watch 2004

POPULATIONS

Figures reflect the neighborhoods with the heaviest concentrations of cicadas •  Delhi (populations of 300 per square yard) • Anderson Township (300 per square yard) • Hyde Park (200 per square yard) • Lower Price Hill (200 per square yard) • Mount Carmel (200 per square yard) Source: Gene Kritsky

Those lucky bugs that have managed to avoid being eaten or squashed since coming out of the ground are now living large at about the halfway point in the short above-ground portion of their lives.

Brood X cicadas hatch from eggs laid in tree branches, fall to the ground, then immediately bury themselves underground for the next 17 years, feeding off liquid in tree and grass roots. After nearly two decades of lying low, they come out of the ground, shed their juvenile skin and try to make it to a tree.

Those that make it immediately start singing for a date.

The emergence of the 17-year periodical cicada started this year on the evening of May 12. About 90 percent of the red-eyed bugs are out of the ground by now, said Dr. Gene Kritsky, cicada researcher and biology professor at the College of Mount St. Joseph. He expects most of the singing bugs to be dead and gone by June 23.

"This emergence is moving very quickly," Kritsky said. "We're in the midst of the phase of intense singing, mating and egg laying. This is the good part for cicadas."

Kritsky said the vast majority of bugs only get to mate once, although about 15 percent of females do it twice or three times. Researchers haven't determined why, but speculate that their initial mating attempt was interrupted.

The singing and mating will carry on for about the next four weeks. Then a massive die-off will leave cicada corpses strewn all over, rotting in the summer sun.

Kritsky said the emergence has gone better than he could have dreamed, in part, because there are heavier concentrations in many areas than predicted.

At the college, Kritsky and his students have found 300 bugs per square yard. During the last emergence in 1987, the population there was about 100 per square yard.

E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com