Cicada I found in Kelowna - I think it was stung by a wasp for food

Cicada I found in Kelowna on May 22.  I found one like it last year too.

I don't know the species of cicada for sure, but I think it may be the Somber Cicada (Okanagana tristis) based on its size and colour (or lack of it).

I made an interesting observation.  I found this cicada on the sidewalk near our house yesterday.  What was peculiar was that there was a wasp next to it.  The wasp was either a yellow jacket or a paper wasp, but the thought is that the wasp stung the cicada and was waiting for the injected toxins to take effect.  The wasp uses captured insects to feed larvae back at its nesting site.  I wrote a blog on it here.

The wasp left as I picked up the cicada; it had a hard time righting itself and seemed less active than what I remember.  I don't know if the presence of the wasp was coincidental or part of the cicada's story.  Between the facts that the cicada seemed off and that it was located in the middle of an asphalt sidewalk where it doesn't belong, I am in favour of the wasp being involved.

The story gets sadder, realizing that the cicada has spent that it has spent between 2 to 5 years feeding underground on the roots of plants, only to enter into adulthood and be stung by a wasp, to then be fed alive to wasp larvae.  The cicada would eventually be paralyzed and unable to move, its life forces still working while the larvae begin to consume it.

I took the insect and attached it to a tree trunk where, if it wasn't in fact stung, it could climb to a higher branch to mate.  I don't know what happened to it.  Either I saved it, saved it from a brutal death, or perhaps just made its grip to the nearest tree that much easier.  The other way of looking at it is that I stole food from hungry wasp larvae.  What a brute I must be!

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com



 

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