Self-organizing cicada choruses respond to the local sound and light environment.

ABSTRACT: Periodical cicadas exhibit an extraordinary capacity for self-organizing spatially synchronous breeding behavior. The regular emergence of periodical cicada broods across the United States is a phenomenon of longstanding public and scientific interest, as the cicadas of each brood emerge in huge numbers and briefly dominate their ecosystem. During the emergence, the 17-year periodical cicada species Magicicada cassini is found to form synchronized choruses, and we investigated their chorusing behavior from the standpoint of spatial synchrony.Cicada choruses were observed to form in trees, calling regularly every five seconds. In order to determine the limits of this self-organizing behavior, we set out to quantify the spatial synchronization between cicada call choruses in different trees,

SUBMITTER: Sheppard LW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7246199 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature