About Cicadas:
Cicadas are insects belonging to the family Cicadidae in the order Hemiptera*. Cicadas are recognizable by their large size (>1 inch) and clear wings held rooflike over the abdomen. Most cicadas are strong fliers that spend their time high in the trees, so they are rarely seen or captured. Their life cycles are long, usually involving multiple years spent underground as juveniles, followed by a brief (roughly 2-6 weeks) adult life above ground. As juveniles and adults, they feed on the xylem fluid of woody plants using piercing and sucking mouthparts. As adults, males produce a loud species-specific mate-attracting song using specialized sound-producing organs called tymbals. These sounds are among the loudest produced by any insects. In some species, the male calling song attracts both males and females to mating aggregations, while in other species males remain dispersed. Female cicadas do not have tymbals, but in some species the females produce clicking or snapping sounds with their wings. After mating, females lay eggs in bark or twigs; the eggs hatch later in the season and the new nymphs burrow underground and begin feeding on roots.
* (note that, as a result of recent molecular phylogenetic studies, the "order Homoptera" is now being recognized as a paraphyletic assemblage within the order Hemiptera).
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