> And female cicadas also damage trees directly by slicing into twigs to lay their eggs. Although these two types of damage rarely kill trees, the effect is enough to reset the clocks of trees such as oaks, which typically undergo “mast years” in which they produce large batches of acorns every few years in synchrony. After accumulating damage during a cicada emergence, these trees produce lean harvests for two autumns in a row and then a feastlike burst of nuts two-and-a-half years after a cicada emergence, Lill says.
You can tell the mast vs non-mast years here in Western Massachusetts (USA) by the appearances of bears in town. In good mast years you don't see any. In bad ones you can wake up with your compost bin destroyed as the bears get hungry and come down out of the hills.
Those mast years, as I understand it, are tied to passenger pigeons - another species that existed in the billions. When sleeping in trees, they’d stack up 3-4 high just to have enough room. Pretty funny bird.
My understanding was that the main theory behind "Mast years" of trees was that it is an evolutionary adaptation to overwhelm squirrels and such so that some acorns are not eaten, and survive to grow into trees.
Are they claiming that female cicadas are the direct cause of mast years? Different cicada broods have different patterns, do we see different mast year patterns in trees that correlate to the local cicada patterns?
No, we here in the Netherlands have mast years too and we don't have any cicadas.
The claim is that they change the mast year pattern for a few years after they emerge.
Interestingly, I think the theory behind the periodical life cycle of the cicadas is the same as the one behind mast years -- there are no predators who have evolved to only be around every 13th year, so the number of predators around will be the same as in non-cicada years. Giving the huge amounts of cicadas in this year a good chance of survival.
> My understanding was that the main theory behind "Mast years" of trees was that it is an evolutionary adaptation to overwhelm squirrels and such so that some acorns are not eaten, and survive to grow into trees.
That was my understanding as well.
> Are they claiming that female cicadas are the direct cause of mast years?
I don't think so--at least, I took it to mean that the typical 2-5 year period between mast years could be thrown off due to an active cicada year, which itself is interesting and not something I'd ever heard before.
> do we see different mast year patterns in trees that correlate to the local cicada patterns?
It would be a great area of research! I've got a big bur oak in my back yard, I might start a log...haha.
Last year was a heavy mast year in Illinois, at least for some oaks. Under some trees it was not possible to take a step w/out stepping on several acorns. Under others the ground was bare. I never did determine if it was that different varieties have different mast years or if they just produced acorns at different times. I suspect it was more likely the former.
13 and 17 year cycles would mean these broods emerge at the same time only every 221 years! Thomas Jefferson was president the last time this happened.
I went through one of these in Ohio in the early 2000s. It was intense, there were huge dense clouds of cicadas flying around. It was extremely loud, and my windshield was a complete mess.
It really did feel like a biblical plague of locusts.
I was just a kid just outside of the DC metro area in the country. I remember my dad and I had to stop the car on the side of the highway because the air was so dense with cicadas and the wipers weren't up to the task.
The noise when getting out and standing in that cloud was difficult to describe. It was so loud, all blended together and harmonized into this weird tone that you felt almost like a colored liquid. Completely surreal.
One of my favorite memories with my dad, looking back.
While I don't know that I've ever experienced a double brood, I've experienced plenty of cicada hatches in my life and this is probably the best way to describe the auditory experience that I've seen! I never know how to describe it to people who haven't been in it but that's a great way. It feels like you're almost swimming in the sound it's so intense. I once was driving along a highway during a brood and thought something was wrong with my car because of this awful sound that had just started, stopped at a rest stop, and was instantly immersed in cicada sound. It was wild!
The 2004 brood was far more memorable than the 2021 brood. 2004 was like you said. In 2021 there was only one place in my neighborhood where that level of noise happened.
I was in Nashville for the last Brood XIX emergence (2011)-- where they actually emerge is pretty patchy, but they were pretty dense around my office building, to the point where you couldn't walk down the sidewalk without stepping on cicadas or cicada shells with almost every step. Went to an area renaissance fair that same month, and they were just about deafening in the forest around the site (thankfully weren't swarming too badly where people were, at least).
I'm not looking forward to this May. Not sure what to expect at home this time around (still in Nashville, but a different part of town)-- hopefully they're not too bad, but I suspect my noise-cancelling headphones will be getting a workout while they're out.
Stuff like this is always priced in. Often it's over priced in and there is a counter move to correct for the over correction.
To put it another way, event specific trading is just gambling.
I know this is a tongue in cheek comment you are making, but my frustrations can't help but explode when I am reminded of the fact that I have lost sizeable amounts of money despite having the correct hypothesizes in the past.
i believe all stock and futures trading, and any investment done on speculation is essentially gambling. even real estate investment can be considered gambling.
But sometimes you truly are the first to know or think about something. Maybe not in this instance, but probably others. Especially if you read a lot of diverse information on many topics.
Sometimes you just have to be ahead of the mean, too.
I made good money on WFH, GPUs, shipping, oil, and energy by being just a little bit ahead of everyone else.
Biggest loss for me was reading about Nikola’s “HTML SUPERCOMPUTER” driving their trucks. The easiest short I ever could’ve taken part in. So obvious. So painful. I discovered it as the story broke, but MAN, if I’d read that just a few weeks earlier…
Right, there is a meta-game at work where you also need to know how many other people are betting on your hypothesis. Sometimes this is somewhat clear, but generally it's impossible to know because of the countless variables that would need to be accounted for.
Could you talk more about correct hypotheses resulting in loss in trading? I feel like I’ve called a couple things correctly and sometimes think of getting into trading to capitalize on such predictions. But I don’t want to cause you any frustration, so no worries if you’d rather not get into it :-)
> Could you talk more about correct hypotheses resulting in loss in trading?
Not the person you are asking, but I can answer this.
You can have a correct hypothesis, but still fail if enough market participants had the exact same hypothesis that they acted on. Because it would lead to the effects of that hypothesis being priced-in.
Made up example: you have a hypothesis that a seemingly unrelated event A will lead to a price increase in sesame seed futures, so you decided to purchase them (expecting them to go in price due to event A, so that you can sell it later at a profit).
The issue you might encounter is that many other market participants recognized the potential effects of event A, so when you buy those sesame seed futures, that potential profit from event A is already priced-in (due to others recognizing it and trading accordingly, thus increasing the price of the futures by the time you buy it, which means that the future gain you expect on those futures has already happened), so you won’t make any gains from that.
As a bonus, if that event A doesn’t manage to factually affect sesame futures once it happens, or it won’t happen at all, you can expect the priced-in portion of the futures’ value pretty much vaporize. Which makes it really lucrative to trade against priced-in events, but it is also risky.
You might ask “but wouldn’t that mean that almost everything is priced-in”, and the answer is “kinda yes”, which is where the origin of the “everything is priced-in” meme comes from (note: it isn’t really true, but it is also really kinda is true).
> so you when many people have the same idea you only win if you are the first
Not necessarily. Being “priced-in” is not a binary event, it can be more or less priced-in. You can still make good profit even if you weren’t one of the first people, you will just make less than the first people, and that’s ok.
> couldn't you check that by looking at the price development up to now?
This ties into my statement above. You can look at the price development, but it won’t tell you “how much it is priced-in” at the moment. It could be fully priced-in with no more left to go. It could also become less priced in (aka more room for you to make profits), as new developments outside of the market occur (e.g., the certainty around event A occurring and affecting sesame seed futures gets increased due to some recently published study).
Price developments also don’t tell you much, as it is a blackbox. Movements could be occurring due to it being relevant to your hypothesis, they could be occurring due to some meta moves (e.g., fed interest rates changing or fed unemployment rates being published), or due to something entirely unrelated whatsoever. It could be just some noise, or it could be something relevant to your hypothesis. In case it is relevant to your hypothesis, it could be that the market reacts fine, but it could also be the case that the market ignores it for a while or overreacts to it.
Markets aren’t a solved problem, and there are no hard and fast rulesets on how to trade successfully. Just make sure you are constantly reassessing your risk profile while utilizing as many relevant variables (which could affect it), and you will be less likely to make terribly naive trades.
That also means, sometimes, not listening to what the prevailing majority (or vocal minority, depends on how you look at it) says. A lot of mainstream reporting on finance these days is not much better than mainstream reporting/“journalism” in general, with the stories based off a few cherry-picked numbers or a couple of tweets. That isn’t to say there is some conspiracy or intentional malicious play happening, there isn’t (on any meaningful scale that would actually matter). It’s just the usual quick-and-fast profit-chasing reporting with the lowest common denominator writing quality. Luckily, when it comes to finance, all the factual happenings have to be disclosed in quarterly earnings reports, so following the source material is very easily doable and helpful (which isn’t the case for a lot of contexts outside of finance, sadly).
Case in point: when Meta stock died heavily a couple of years ago during the whole metaverse hype, I remember thinking that the metaverse bet by Zuck was a bit too optimistic and forward-thinking (i legitimately think it was just too early for its time, given the current state of tech and internet coupled with Zuck’s optimism). I was certain that the market overreacted massively, and I also remembered that every time Zuck was clowned for his controversial strategic decisions before, he would always have the last laugh (just check all the news articles related to Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, or articles about IG copying Snap Stories feature). Coupled with strong earnings reports and forward-looking guidance presented during those, I was certain that betting on Meta would be a big payoff. The market had priced-in failure for Meta already, and the possibility of the Meta doomer hypothesis being wrong seemed very likely to me. So I bet big on Meta around that time.
Sure, for the first year of that, I was losing money (I bought-in after Meta went down to slightly below $200/share) as the meta tanked down to $100. But I held, as I was certain of this just being an overreaction, and it paid off. Would it have been much better if I waited until Meta went down to $100/share before I bought in? Sure, but I can’t time the markets perfectly, and I am more than ok with the outcomes I got. Remember that perfect is the enemy of good.
It's easy if the outcome isn't coupled tightly enough to the hypothesis.
If your hypothesis is that the stock will go up because of some specific future event, and you buy a call option that is overpriced, you can lose money even if the hypothesis is true (the call option price can decrease).
Nothing says summer on the east coast to me like the drone of cicadas on a really hot day. The numbers for Brood II which seems to dominate the area doesn't quite match up with my memories of the loudest cicadas. It's a weird sound, sort of a collective between many different cicadas which aren't quite all in the same phase.
There are youtube videos that talk about this. Using 2,5,7 while being prime, just didn't offer enough separation to offer the best protection from predators. A smaller prime number allows the possibility that a predator could be around for more than one emergence. Evolutionary pressures found a balance at the 13/17 year gaps to mimimize that from occurring.
I've also heard - but don't remember why - that there's some reason why primes of form 4n+1 would be preferred to primes of form 4n-1, which is why you don't see 11-year or 19-year cicadas.
After further thinking back on this, it wasn't just survival from predators. It also had to do with the sharing of resources with different broods. At 13/17 combos, the overlap seems to balance out that each brood has the resources to continue with low risk of sharing. Every couple hundred years seems to be far enough that the species is not at risk of competition ending one of the broods.
I recall that this has something to do with the ebb and flow of their predator's populations, over the eons it has aligned with periods of declining predator population.
The golden ratio is really neat too, it works out to the longest period between overlaps for leaves and petals, which maximizes energy per cost.
An interesting aspect of that is that phi =1+1/phi, which if you expand that fraction it becomes 1+1/(1+1/(1+1/(...))), so it's actually the irrational number least approximatable by rationals. All repeating rotations are rational ratios, and so phi, being the least appriximable gives the angle with the least overlap for leaves over any number of leaves.
if predators breed annually, that means that one year is the clock-tick, not the cycle. as a very simplified example, let's say there is some fixed availability of prey. so if there are a ton of predators born and/or come to maturity in one year, they will exhaust the food supply, spend their time and energy fighting for food or starving, and have a population crash next year. the reduced population that year will have a glut of food and a surplus of time and energy for breeding, leading to a boom the year after that, for a two-year cycle with a one-year tick.
It becomes a problem if broods emerge two years in a row. Then the predator population would not have enough time to die down before the second emergence.
I moved to Oklahoma for a few years in the early aughts, after growing up on the west coast. The first time heard cicadas I thought there was a rattlesnake about to get me. The first time I saw a cicada it freaked me out completely. I thought it was some kind of weird giant bee.
I had a similar experience moving from the Bay Area to Kansas in the 2010s. I landed in the KC metro just in time for the most recent local emergence.
I was amazed at what was such a foreign experience. There were so many cicadas flying about that I had them landing on me and hanging on while I mowed my half-acre lawn. Free loaders!
Joking aside, the sound was deafening but strangely comforting after I got used to it. My dogs also think cicadas are fun-to-chase snacks, as we still have some emerge every year, just nowhere near the volume during of a brood emergence.
To the sibling poster wondering about how to experience them: my experience is they’re impossible to miss during a brood emergence, even in a metro area like Kansas City. Driving through… you’ll definitely hit them with your car! But just stopping at a local park to see them all hanging and flying around trees will net a pretty solid experience, too.
I hadn't realized that there were different broods with different phases of the same period. I wonder if thats convergent evolution, or if it's due to "errors" when a few individuals randomly over/undersleep and then breed in the "wrong" year, growing a new brood.
Could it also maybe be related to interactions between 13 & 17 year cicadas?
https://cicadas.uconn.edu/#Hybrids says that hybrid 13/17 cicadas would either have a 13- or 17-year-cycle, but hints that the subsequent generation may be interesting.
The obvious outcome would be that the grand-children of a 13/17 year hybrid might re-hybridize back from 17 -> 13, or 13 -> 17.
If enough of the grandchildren stabilize on their new cycle, you'd end up with a 13 year brood 4 years later than the original 13 year brood, and a 17 year brood 4 years earlier than the original 17 year brood.
Fun fact - cicadas are edible and reportedly delicious. Whenever big broods emerge you see restaurants serving various dishes - popcorn cicadas (deep fried), chocalate covered, etc etc.
I'm trying to work up the courage to give it a try this time around.
Do it! I've eaten lightly fried crickets a few times. Tasted somewhere between slightly stale popcorn and walnuts. Not unpleasant at all, and I feel like they could be quite good if cooked fresh instead of pre-packaged. I'd definitely try cicada.
It's probably too early -- looks like cicadas need 64 degree soil to emerge, which the internet says is more of a late April/May thing. It's been a warm year, but it's probably too much to hope to see cicadas if you travel to the appropriate area for the eclipse.
That's wild.