#decula

[humblegrub]

This weekend (5/17-19/2024) my parents and I journeyed through central Illinois seeking evidence of the 2024 double emergence of periodical cicadas, Brood XII and XIX! Our mission was to

1) take clear and detailed photos for citizen science apps

2) go to locations cicadas had NOT been seen yet to search for them

3) go to locations cicadas HAD been seen to verify their presence.

We used Cicada Safari (recommend!) and also iNaturalist (highly recommend!) to map our path… and boy oh boy, our mission was HIGHLY successful. 5/5 of our planned stops had cicadas in varying numbers - from a single sighting in a small woods near the Illinois River to thousands singing in a central public park in Jacksonville. I'm not able to confidently ID them to a species level (there are actually 7 distinct but similar species in the genus Magicicada), but I still took tons and tons of photos. If you are confident in your IDing skills please DM me and I'll share my iNaturalist account with you!

On the way down we listened to the Ologies episode "Cicadology with Gene Kritsky" (recommend!) and also an episode of 30 Animals That Made Us Smarter on "Cicada and safe surfaces". I also listened to "Cicadapalooza" from Sidedoor, a podcast by the Smithsonian on my own time and got even more cool insights.

This was probably one of the best vacations I've ever taken because we were just driving around and looking for bugs!!! Would you ever go on a road trip just to look for a specific bug?

MORE PICS UNDER THE CUT!

The path we took, plotted out with help from Cicada Safari, iNaturalist, and google maps :)

The first (top) and last (bottom) cicadas I took pictures of.

Exuviae everywhere at Duncan Park in Jacksonville, IL.

got mightily crawled upon!!

I brought hand lenses for everyone but ended up not using them that much!

[beatersteeleblippoedition]

The greed disgusts me...

They're not eating all that meat.. they need to share with the towns people.. peter has enough meat already, and I just personally can't take it any more, and I won't stand for this... cause HES A GLUTTON.. AHHHHHH‼✅✅✅🚫😞👅🗣🔊🚫🐎🐎🐎🐎🏇🏇🏇

[load-session-zeta]

LSZ - Session Alpha-Epsilon (Æ) Overview

(Simplified for Brevity)

Session Alpha Epsilon is a glitched Beforan timeline created by the Muse of Void to act as the prelude to the Zeta Timeline wherein Meenah’s chain, The Alpha Chain, was “clipped” into another chain, The Epsilon Chain. This glitch was caused by a “mutantblood” only referred to by the name “Illiad”, The “Prince of Space”, by connecting to their own chain from Mituna Captor’s hivestem and simultaneously closing their chains.

The session ended up consisting of two closed chains joined at one land creating a sort of infinity shaped loop. The game was obviously still unwinnable but that’s not to say substantial changes didn’t occur.

Bullet lists are below the cut

The consequences of this error are as follows;

• The games are linked at Mituna and Illiad’s shared Land, The Land of Volts and Tadpoles.

• The games are unwinnable, with everything duplicated the proper universe frog cannot be bred and the scratching of one half, in turn scratches the other half.

• 25x Prototyped Carapacian Monarchs: existential horror could indeed get worse.

• Petty rivalry between the Fuchsiabloods causing the game to go from Co-Op to a 12v12 race. Illiad was excluded because: “They couldn’t 8e loc8ed post-entry until the scratch discussions”

The following changes have been made to the Canon Dancestors;

• Meenah now incorporates more AAVE into her dialogue

• Cronus is… a much more tolerable guy, to say the least. He’s actually being kept in check and reprimanded by someone instead of being endlessly enabled and let loose. This has in turn, avoided his canon situation with Mituna entirely. Instead it has been changed to an estranged “friendship” where Cronus has been avoiding Mituna since his break.

• Kurloz is a little more sociable

• Horuss is more or less the same

• Aranea is now 55% MORE talkative because there’s more coplayers for her to yap about.

• Latula god-tiered and is actually pretty good at being the sole voice of genuine logic for her half of the chain.

• Porrim also god-tiered and is now pretty good at pointing out holes in Kankri’s tirades. Plus she actually made progress on the frog breeding now until she found out the session was unwinnable and a scratch was mandatory.

• Meulin is pretty much the same but she gets a lot more attention thanks to the Epsilon half of the session all being pretty chill with her

• Kankri is approximately 5% less preach-ey, also he’s gotten over his obvious flushed feelings for Latula (not by choice)

• Mituna has just had the occasional gibberish removed from his typing quirk for the sake of everyone reading his dialogue and my frequently cramping wrists, he’s also on fairly good terms with Cronus now but the relationship is strained, Mituna doesn’t know why.

• Rufioh is worse. He’s just worse.

• Damara interacts with more people now, she’s marginally less hostile towards those who haven’t wronged her personally (anyone not named Meenah Rufioh or Horuss), She occasionally speaks in broken english still but, just like in canon, only to humans.

The Epsilon Chain’s full player Roster is as follows;

• “Illiad” - “Prince of Space”

• Tambov Koryak - Witch of Breath

• Sentir Candan - Bard of Heart

• Decula Hybris - Page of Mind

• Maenas Cerner - Maid of Void

• Gotman Hauser - Mage of Blood

• Miller Marian - Prince of Doom

• Pyrrho Mirand - Heir of Rage

• Kairos Ricket - Sylph of Time

• Eponah Martur - Knight of Space

• Heilah Feigen - Seer of Life

• Cossus Anulap - Rogue of Light

• Sycoph Othelo - Thief of Hope

[hainesic]

Tiger Of Sweden top Decula femei, culoarea bej

Un nou top pe https://hainesic.ro/topuri/tiger-of-sweden-top-decula-femei-culoarea-bej-6f8591e30-answearro/

Tiger Of Sweden top Decula femei, culoarea bej

#topuri #topurisic #bluze

[forestkodama]

You might be hearing noise about the eminent emergence in the United States of Brood X cicadas in 2021.  “So what?” you may ask. “Cicadas are found everywhere.  How else would the trees scream?”

Cicadas are found globally, you’re right!  Their sing their head-splitting songs every summer in both hemispheres.  But those are annual cicadas.  Brood X is part of a uniquely eastern North American species group known as periodic cicadas.  They belong to the entirely appropriately named genus Magicicada. Unlike annual cicadas, who stay underground as nymphs for a year or two before emerging as adults to scream their butts off, mate, and die, Magicicadas stay underground for 13 or 17 years.  They are some of the longest-lived insects!

The easiest way to differentiate periodic cicadas from annual cicadas is 1) geography - are you not in Eastern North America? then it’s not a periodic cicada - and 2) eyes - Magicicadas are black-bodied with ominous red eyes, while all other cicadas in Eastern North America have green and brownish eyes.

Periodic cicadas are already wild - I mean, living underground for 13? 17? years???  A PRIME NUMBER??? IN MY NATURE????? - but their species complexes are a confusing jumble of specific epithets that are befitting the orgies they have when they emerge as adults.

See, when periodic cicadas emerge as adults, they don’t just pop out every few hectares like annual cicadas, creating a gentle chorus of song to accompany the graceful sway of the meadow grass; period cicadas emerge EN MASS, millions per hectare, at least one adult cicada per square meter.  They form dense aggregations in the trees after crawling out of the ground, molting, and then starting to scream.  The males are doing the singing with their butts: The first section of their abdomen has a pair of vibrating structures of ridged membranes called tymbals and the rest of the abdomen is hollow and amplifies the song.  Females do not have tymbals, so they cannot scream.  Both sexes have hearing organs on their abdomen called tympana (which I have totally never confused for the tymbal and grossly embarrassed myself in front of other entomologists, nope, never) to find (or avoid) the songs of the males.

Cicada songs are unique to the species, which is useful, because multiple species can emerge in a given year.  Millions and millions of bugs popping out of the ground, all screaming, and the only way to figure out who is mate with is the specific way the butt vibrates.  Sounds like a challenge. These mass emergences are called broods or year-class (designated by Roman numerals), and this is where the real craziness comes in.

There are three species groups in Magicicada that have distinct endings to the specific epithet (-decim, -cassini and -decula), and each groups has a least two members. We know of seven species, four with a 13-year life cycle, and three with a 17-year life cycle.  Each species is more closely related to other members of its own species group (the distinct endings of the names) than to others with the same life cycle (13 vs 17).  In other words, the 17-year Magicicada septendecim is more closely related to the 13-year Magicicada neotredecim than it is the 17-year Magicicada tredecassini!  How the FUCK did that evolve??

Remember, cicada may live for a long time as nymphs, snug underground, sucking on tree roots, but the adults only live for a season: Scream, fly, fuck, die (not a bad life, tbh).  The year you emerge, that is the year you mate.  What weird selection pressures and epigenetic carry-overs can make a subset of a population suddenly switch from 13 years as a nymph to 17, or vice versa???  You can’t just be off by a year, emerging early or late, because that screws up the benefits of primes.  Because of how bizarre the situation is - I mean, prime numbers, honestly - it’s generally assumed that Magicicadas neatly avoided predation as a selection pressure by utilizing that prime-number system: Predators have a pretty difficult time synchronizing to a weirdo cycle like that.  Predators do take advantage of the mass emergences, because, fuck yeah, abundant protein.  (This includes humans too:  Take off the wings, legs, and heads, batter-dip, and fry.  There are cookbooks for them!) But that doesn’t explain the shifts back and forth from 13 to 17.  Most entomologists that specialize in cicadas think it is likely climate-driven, which is a bit ambiguous, but ecology is fucking hard and nailing down any one or few of the multitude of environmental variables that drive anything is a fundamental challenge of the science (she says from experience >_>).

Now, given there are only so many species and there is a distinct cycle to their emergence, we can predict who comes out when.  There are 12 broods of 17-year cicadas (with five year-classes containing no cicadas), and 3 broods of 13-year cicadas (with ten empty year-classes).  Most of the year-classes contain a mixture of 13- or 17-year species, with a couple exceptions. Brood VII contains only one 17-year species and 13-year Brood XXII has all but one of the 13-year species.  This means that we can also get overlaps!  In 2024, Brood XIII (17-year cicadas) and Brood XIX (13-year cicadas) will be emerging together!

Brood X, coming out this year, is a big fucking brood.  Some broods are small, isolated to state-sized or smaller regions.  But not Brood X.  Here is the map of their emergence.  Solid symbols are certain records; hollow are suspect historical records.

(Map taken from the excellent magicicada.org.)

Billions of bugs!  THE TREES ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF SCREAMING! A fuck-fest of vibrations! Birds and cicada killer wasps and squirrels and snakes and frogs and people feasting on the screaming fruits of trees!

And then....

Silence.

For the next brood that should come out in 2022, Brood XI, was last seen in 1954. Brood XI was a small 17-year brood, isolated to southern New England, and the only study that has looked at the Brood XI extinction suggests that it was driven by climatic shifts as opposed to the only obvious anthropogenic influence to affect cicadas (deforestation and fragmentation), but the timing is weird and coincides with other major insect population declines for the area.  Brood XI is one of two broods to go extinct (the other is Brood XXI from the Florida panhandle).  Pour one out to remember what we have lost.

So, my fellow USAians, I give you something that is uniquely American.  Something we can take pride in.  Something found no where else in the world.  Something that truly makes our continent great.  Embrace them.  Love them.  Our backyards hold unique wonders.

[catilinas]

am i missing something or is this just plain wrong about when metellus pius was consul

[woopdoo]

Me when its Friday! Me about to slide into the Weekend! Me when I get off my shift at work on Friday! Me when its the Weekend! Me about to head out on Friday night! TGIF (Thank Gosh Its Friday)! When it's the weekend! Can't wait for the weakened! When its Friday

hi decula

[udc793]

On 27 May, I spotted my 1st M septendecula (Decula), rarest of the 3 species as well as the most recently described (1962). Note the nice neat bands, clearly pigmented, fully sclerotized, and no orange on thorax. (at Arlington, Virginia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPa8m7FsWNqwcK5qbyhtYZKv0BdnMeEj607pt40/?utm_medium=tumblr

[sciencespies]

Giant brood of billions of insects set to emerge in US in mass synchronized event

https://sciencespies.com/nature/giant-brood-of-billions-of-insects-set-to-emerge-in-us-in-mass-synchronized-event/

Giant brood of billions of insects set to emerge in US in mass synchronized event

A big event in the insect world is approaching. Starting sometime in April or May, depending on latitude, one of the largest broods of 17-year cicadas will emerge from underground in a dozen states, from New York west to Illinois and south into northern Georgia. This group is known as Brood X, as in the Roman numeral for 10.

For about four weeks, wooded and suburban areas will ring with cicadas’ whistling and buzzing mating calls. After mating, each female will lay hundreds of eggs in pencil-sized tree branches.

Then the adult cicadas will die. Once the eggs hatch, new cicada nymphs fall from the trees and burrow back underground, starting the cycle again.

There are perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 species of cicadas around the world, but the 13- and 17-year periodical cicadas of the eastern US appear to be unique in combining long juvenile development times with synchronized, mass adult emergences.

These events raise many questions for entomologists and the public alike. What do cicadas do underground for 13 or 17 years? What do they eat? Why are their life cycles so long? Why are they synchronized? And is climate change affecting this wonder of the insect world?

We study periodical cicadas to understand questions about biodiversity, biogeography, behavior and ecology – the evolution, natural history and geographic distribution of life. We’ve learned many surprising things about these insects: For example, they can travel through time by changing their life cycles in four-year increments. It’s no accident that the scientific name for periodical 13- and 17-year cicadas is Magicicada, shortened from “magic cicada”.

[embedded content]

Natural history

As species, periodical cicadas are older than the forests that they inhabit. Molecular analysis has shown that about 4 million years ago, the ancestor of the current Magicicada species split into two lineages. Some 1.5 million years later, one of those lineages split again. The resulting three lineages are the basis of the modern periodical cicada species groups, Decim, Cassini, and Decula.

Early American colonists first encountered periodical cicadas in Massachusetts. The sudden appearance of so many insects reminded them of biblical plagues of locusts, which are a type of grasshopper. That’s how the name “locust” became incorrectly associated with cicadas in North America.

During the 19th century, notable entomologists such as Benjamin Walsh, CV Riley, and Charles Marlatt worked out the astonishing biology of periodical cicadas. They established that unlike locusts or other grasshoppers, cicadas don’t chew leaves, decimate crops, or fly in swarms.

Instead, these insects spend most of their lives out of sight, growing underground and feeding on plant roots as they pass through five juvenile stages. Their synchronized emergences are predictable, occurring on a clockwork schedule of 17 years in the North and 13 years in the South and Mississippi Valley. There are multiple, regional year classes, known as broods.

(Chris Simon/CC BY-ND)

IMAGE: The five stages of the periodical cicada underground juveniles. Between each stage the juvenile cicada molts so that it can become larger. Actual size of the fifth-stage nymph is 0.83 inches.

Safety in numbers

The key feature of Magicicada biology is that these insects emerge in huge numbers. This increases their chances of accomplishing their key mission above ground: finding mates.

Dense emergences also provide what scientists call a predator-satiation defense. Any predator that feeds on cicadas, whether it’s a fox, squirrel, bat or bird, will eat its fill long before it consumes all of the insects in the area, leaving many survivors behind.

While periodical cicadas largely come out on schedule every 17 or 13 years, often a small group emerges four years early or late. Early-emerging cicadas may be faster-growing individuals who had access to abundant food, and the laggards may be individuals that subsisted with less.

If growing conditions change over time, having the ability to make this kind of life cycle switch and come out either four years early in favorable times or four years late in more difficult times becomes important.

If a sudden warm or cold phase causes a large number of cicadas to make a one-time mistake and come out off-schedule by four years, the insects can emerge in sufficient numbers to satiate predators and shift to a new schedule.

Broods of cicadas, identified by Roman numerals, emerge on 13- or 17-year cycles. (University of Connecticut, CC BY-ND)

Census time for Brood X

As glaciers retreated from what is now the US some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, periodical cicadas filled eastern forests. Temporary life cycle switching has formed a complex mosaic of broods.

Today there are 12 broods of 17-year periodical cicadas in northeastern deciduous forests, where trees drop leaves in winter. These groups are numbered sequentially and fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. In the Southeast and the Mississippi Valley there are three broods of 13-year cicadas.

Because periodical cicadas are sensitive to climate, the patterns of their broods and species reflect climatic shifts. For example, genetic and other data from our work indicate that the 13-year species Magicicada neotredecim, which is found in the upper Mississippi Valley, formed shortly after the last glaciation.

As the environment warmed, 17-year cicadas in the area emerged successively, generation after generation, after 13 years underground until they were permanently shifted to a 13-year cycle.

But it’s not clear whether cicadas can continue to evolve as quickly as humans alter their environment. Although periodical cicadas prefer forest edges and thrive in suburban areas, they cannot survive deforestation or reproduce in areas without trees.

Indeed, some broods have already become extinct. In the late 19th century, one brood (XXI) disappeared from north Florida and Georgia. Another (XI) has been extinct in northeast Connecticut since around 1954, and a third (VII) in upstate New York has shrunk from eight counties to one since mapping first began in the mid-1800s.

Climate change could also have far-reaching effects. As the US climate warms, longer growing seasons may provide a larger food supply. This may eventually change more 17-year cicadas into 13-year cicadas, just as past warming altered Magicicada neotredecim.

Large-scale early emergences occurred in 2017 in Cincinnati and the Baltimore-Washington metro area, and in 1969, 2003, and 2020 in the Chicago metro area – potential harbingers of this kind of change.

Researchers need detailed high-quality information to track cicada distributions over time. Citizen scientists play a key role in this effort because periodical cicada populations are so large and their adult emergences only last a few weeks.

Volunteers who want to help document Brood X’s emergence this spring can download the Cicada Safari mobile phone app, provide snapshots, and follow our research in real time online at www.cicadas.uconn.edu. Don’t miss out – the next opportunity won’t come until Broods XIII and XIX emerge in 2024.

John Cooley, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut and Chris Simon, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Nature

[radiobagel]

Radio Weekly(9/1-9/6)

先週のふりかえり。夏期休業明け２週目、全然暑くてグッタリしてしまいます＞＜だいたい朝６時前には自転車でお店来るのですが、その時間でも出勤前から汗だくになってしまいます。去年の今頃は30度切るくらいの気温でしたので、今年はやっぱり残暑厳しいですね。適切な水分補給と休憩、大事ですよね。イートインは中止していますが、お水のピッチャー置いてますので、必要でしたら水分補給してくださいね。

今週から季節限定ベーグル「メイプルウォルナッツ」販売開始です。DEAN & DECULA京都のみにて販売していましたが、９月は当店でもお買い求め出来ます！ローストしたクルミをメイプルシロップで味付けして、さらにメイプルシュガーを加えて作っています。期間限定ですのでお早めにどうぞ〜。

今週のサンドイッチメニューです。

ベー��ン＆エッグ・・・美山の平飼い卵、厚切りベーコン、チェダーチーズ、トマト、自家製タルタルソースを重ねてボリュームたっぷりです。

３種キノコとチーズスクランブルエッグ（季節限定）・・・一晩塩漬けした豚肩ロース、バターでソテーした人参にナンプラーベースのソースで味付けしています。

スモークチキンとピクルス・・・オープン当初からの定番サンド。スモークチキン、ピクルス、粒マスタード、クリームチーズの組み合わせなので、冷やしても美味しい！

ロックス（スモークサーモンとクリームチーズ）・・・オープン当初からの定番。スモークサーモンとクリームチーズの組み合わせなので冷やしても美味しい。

アップルフィグクリームチーズ（季節限定）・・・自家製レモンカードとレモンピール入りクリームチーズの爽やかな味わい、夏にぴったり！

ラムレーズンクリームチーズ・・・ダークな甘みで自家製ラムレーズン使用です。

九条ねぎクリームチーズ・・・京都名物九条ネギをふんだんに混ぜたクリームチーズです。

今週もまだまだ残暑厳しいですね。もうしばらく家でまったりしているのが吉なのかもしれません。今月一押しの「メイプルウォルナッツベーグル」は通販でもお買い求め出来ますよ！9月の通販受注も半分くらい埋まっていますので、お早めにどうぞ〜。秋のサンドイッチも販売開始していますので、散歩ついでにお店にもどうぞ。

[artscult]

Decula Antelope - high resolution image from old book.

[onceagainxp-blog]

decula

[hainesic]

Tiger Of Sweden top Decula femei, culoarea bej

Un nou top pe https://hainesic.ro/topuri/tiger-of-sweden-top-decula-femei-culoarea-bej-6bbb2c825-answearro/

Tiger Of Sweden top Decula femei, culoarea bej

#topuri #topurisic #bluze