Diario del proyecto EcoSpark Participant Observations

If you've heard a noise like a power saw coming from treetops lately, you were the wrong audience. The noise is male cicadas calling out to females in a brief courtship time following years of juvenile life underground.
Some cicadas, called periodic cicadas, emerge all together after 13 or 17 years sucking root juices beneath the soil. After emerging, cicadas mate and lay eggs in twigs, which eventually fall to the ground to start the cycle anew. Just why some cicadas are periodic remains a mystery, though one hypothesis is that the burst of many individuals emerging after so long overwhelms predator populations.
Citizen scientists are well positioned to contribute important data on cicadas, just by observing them! Try using the audio recording option with iNaturalist, or zoom in if you find the large insect in your neighbourhood for a great photo. Submit your observations, and read up on neat cicada facts like these:

Cicadas have antimicrobial wings that engineers have tried to recreate:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.5b08309

Certain fungi parasitize cicadas so that the insects act like zombies to spread the fungal spores:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1754504819300352

Researchers can glean info about climate change and environmental toxins from cicada lifecycles, which are so linked to the trees in their forest and urban habitats:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-are-cicadas-180975009/

Want a fun way to connect students and families with nature? Check out BackyardBio.net!
Our friends at Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants have put together this really exciting initiative for September to engage more people in nature observation around the world. Here's the scoop:

"To start the 2020/2021 school year, we think it's important for students to explore the biodiversity around them and realize that they can play a role in protecting it. The start of this school year will be very different for students everywhere, some will be in the classroom, some will be at home, others still will be doing a hybrid of some sort. What all students can do is get excited about the natural world, explore it, learn more about it and share their discoveries with students everywhere."

Join in #BackyardBio:

1) Register your classroom.
2) Turn them loose in their communities with the iNaturalist and Seek apps.
(We suggest starting with this resource: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/teacher's+guide)
3) Share photos via Instagram and Twitter using #BackyardBio
4) Join a virtual event with classrooms from other geographical locations.
5) Check out some exciting resources to immerse your students in the fascinating world of biodiversity.

Find out more at BackyardBio.net or https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/backyardbio