CATDOLL : CATDOLL: How to hatch a cicada

1. How to hatch golden cicada

The Colorful World Team [Wanderer in the Wasteland] will answer your questions

Incubate in soil

Bury in soil to retain moisture

(I) Obtaining seed sources and collecting eggs. Choose a place with dense trees and many cicadas, and use a long pole with a high branch pruner on the top to cut off the thin dry branches on the tree that have been killed by cicada egg laying. Any branches that are flat and dry on one side and have an incomplete surface, and a large number of milky white oblong eggs embedded in the subcutaneous wood are cicada eggs. Cut off the excess egg-free dead branches above the egg-laying nest, and leave 10-15 cm egg-free branches below the egg-laying nest trace. Bundle 50 into a small bundle and put them in a plastic bag. Leave a hole in the plastic bag. Collect adults, and collect mature larvae at 18-24. The harvester uses a flashlight to catch them at the base of the tree trunk. After harvesting, put them in a gauze box to hatch and lay eggs. Plant shrub-like host plants in the egg-laying gauze box, and you can plant some fruit trees. You can also catch adults on the tree.

(ii) Egg burial: Collect branches with eggs collected from the wild or from the seed source site and incubate them indoors. Spread 5-10 cm of fine dry sand on the bottom of a wooden or plastic box that is 70 cm long, 40 cm wide, and 20 cm high, and place the egg branches in bundles vertically or horizontally on it. Use a small sprayer to spray mist continuously to keep the air at a high humidity. If nymphs are found during this period, the branches with eggs will be buried in the breeding farm with sand. The burial time is from September to October (2-year eggs), and the eggs of the current year can only be buried in June or July of the following year. The burial position is 1 meter away from the base of the trunk under the host plant tree. Dig a narrow trench 30-50 cm deep, such as ring, square, triangle, parallel or radial, so as to facilitate digging or capture. After burial, cover the soil and compact it, and keep a record of the trench shape and depth. After hatching, the cicada starts to grow in June. It weighs 1 gram in the first year, and its whole body and eyes are milky white; the next year, it weighs 3 grams, its whole body pigment deepens, and its eyes are pink; the third year, the nymphs mature, weighing 4-4.5 grams, with an average of 210 per kilogram, with brown body color and dark gray eyes. 4. Disease and Pest Control There are many natural enemies of nymphs and adults, such as toads, snakes, mice, hedgehogs, sparrows and other birds; microorganisms such as Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae and Cordyceps sinensis (Cicada Flower Fungus). Floods and pesticides and fertilizers are more harmful to nymphs or adults. The most important season is the egg stage of "Cicada Ants" on the tree, and the emergence of mature nymphs. The natural enemies of the egg stage and "Cicada Ants" on the tree are mainly ants and red small flower toon. The prevention and control measures are to soak the branches with eggs in a solution diluted 100 times with strong chlorine, or to treat the soil with pesticides such as dichlorvos and strong chlorine.

2. Hatching of cicada larvae

Natural habits of grasshoppers Grasshoppers usually complete one generation in 3 to 5 years, and there are also records of completing one generation in 5 to 6 years or 12 to 13 years. They overwinter as egg groups on young branches of the current or biennial years, and as nymphs of various ages concentrated on plant roots in the soil. That is, there are two overwintering insects, eggs and nymphs of different sizes; the overwintering places are also divided into two environments: aboveground and underground.

The overwintering eggs begin to hatch in mid-May of the following year, with the peak hatching period from late May to early June, and the hatching activity ends in late June. Most eggs hatch in the afternoon, accounting for about 80%, while fewer hatch at night, about 20%. The egg period is close to 300 days. The activities of overwintering nymphs are most affected by ground temperature and host plant sap. When the temperature is higher than 10℃~15℃, the tree sap begins to flow, and the overwintering nymphs then begin to pierce and suck food.

The nymphs (called cicada ants) hatched from the overwintering eggs burrow into the soil and suck sap from the roots of the host plant. They are less active. As they grow older, they build earthen chambers of different sizes and shapes to live in. The outer surface of the earthen chamber is rough, and the inner wall is smooth and moist. Part of the wall is attached to the roots of plants for feeding. When the temperature drops in autumn, they burrow into the deep soil layer to hibernate. When the spring warms up, they move upward to the roots of trees. The number of nymphs in the soil is the largest in May of the year. This is when the overwintering eggs are hatched in large numbers and the last instar nymphs are about to emerge from the soil and molt into adults.

After completing the entire life cycle of the nymph in the soil, the mature nymphs drill out of the soil from late May to mid-to-late August, and crawl to the branches of shrubs, stems of weeds, etc., and use the claws and thorns of the front feet to fix on the bark and branches, and molt into adults. The peak period of adult emergence is from mid-June to mid-July, and the end period is in early October. About 20 days after the adults emerge, they mate and lay eggs. They start laying eggs in late June. The peak period of adult egg laying is from the end of June to late August, and the end period of egg laying is from early September to early October. The last appearance of adults is in early November. That is, the egg-laying period of adults can last from late June to early October.

Adults usually emerge at 8-10 pm and 4-6 am, with a male-female ratio of 1:1. Adults often live on tree trunks and branches, and have the habit of fighting fires at night. Adults lay eggs on one- or two-year-old branches with a thickness of 2-7 mm. The eggs are laid in the wood of the branches. The egg nests are close together, mostly in a single row or double row, arranged in a straight line, and a few are arranged in a curved or spiral shape. There are 6-8 eggs in each egg nest, 12-479 eggs in an egg-laying branch, generally 20-200 eggs, and an average of 146 eggs. There are 6-146 egg holes on each branch. Each female insect carries more than 500-1000 eggs in her abdomen, with a maximum of 1500 eggs, a minimum of 20 eggs, and an average of 800 eggs. The life span of adults is about 3 months, and the occurrence period is generally from July to September each year. Adults have wings and can fly, and use their piercing-sucking mouthparts to suck the nutrient juice from young branches of trees. After mating, female cicadas insert their ovipositors into the wood of tender branches of the current or biennial year before laying eggs. At the same time, they cause the tender branches to dehydrate, dry up, and die, causing damage to the trees.

3. How do cicadas lay eggs in the soil?

The ovipositor of the female cicada is very sharp, a bit like a needle. It pokes a circle of small holes on the young branches and lays eggs inside the wood of the tree. It also uses its mouthparts to pierce a circle of bast at the bottom of the young branches, cutting off the supply of water and nutrients to the branches, causing them to gradually wither and die. In this way, the branches with eggs are easily blown to the ground by the wind, so that the hatched young cicadas (called larvae) can burrow into the soil.

The eggs laid by cicadas hatch into young cicadas in half a month. The life period of young cicadas is particularly long. The shortest one lives underground for 2 to 3 years, usually 4 to 5 years, and the longest is 17 years. Young cicadas live underground for a long time, with warm winters and cool summers, and few natural enemies to threaten them. They are quite comfortable. After molting 4 to 5 times, they will drill out of the ground and climb onto branches to molt one by one (called "golden cicada molting"), becoming adults.