“Bugs” are in the news this month.

First of all, Gregory Vogt stopped by to let us know how the Spiders in Space were doing:

“The spiders made it to orbit Monday morning. The Space Shuttle Endeavour will rendezvous and dock with the International Space Station Wednesday morning. The spiders will be unstowed from Endeavour and transferred to the station Thursday morning. We should have the first pictures available for viewing by the weekend. Check out http://www.bioedonline.org.”

Should be interesting to see how the spiders do in space.

Periodical cicadas are also in the news. There is a large emergence of thirteen year cicadas, Magicicada tredecim, across the southeastern United States right now. They are called thirteen year cicadas because they stay underground as nymphs for thirteen years.

Have you ever seen an adult cicada emerge? Here is a time lapse video that shows the process.

Edit: At the request of readers, I have removed the video because of the noise. You can watch it at Mark Dolies’ link.

Video by Mark Dolejs (click the link to see how he made the video).

BugGuide has some good still photographs and more information.

Related posts:
Summer Sounds
Every Seventeen Years at Stop the Ride

Have you ever seen/heard periodical cicadas?