Seventeen years ago, I didn’t care about id’ing a periodical cicada to species, but thanks to iNat, now I do. With the big emergence about to happen in my area, it’s time to get educated about the differences between: Magicicada septendecim Magicicada cassinii Magicicada septendecula This page at…

[image] roshan2010: I would make sure to get one of the underside of the abdomen and the area between the eye and wing Thanks! So for the patch between eye/wing, it looks like septendecim has orange, the other two are dark at that spot. From the upperside, can cassini vs septendecula be disti…

I don’t think you can ID them to species with just the upperside. You could separate them into septendecim and cassini/septendecula. With the abdomen, septendecim has almost completely orange stripes, septendecula has black stripes with some orange, and cassini has a pretty much completely black a…

Thanks! With that in mind I’m thinking about all the incoming observations we might see with just the upperside- where it’s too tough to call they could just be id’d to Magicicada with a note about the species similarity.

BTW I just remembered that underside shots could lead to bonus observations of Massospora cicadina which is pretty cool. :)

I’m a little late to this conversation, but roshan2010 nailed it when they said that the most important features are on the underside. I’m encouraging people to try to get underside shots for my project ( https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/brood-x-cicadas-2021 ) so that we can get as many species-le…

I would think that since M. septendecim is probably going to be the most common species, a lot of the upperside shots would still be IDable to species as long as they show the area between the wing and eye.

It is true that the presence of an orange patch is enough to confirm septendecim ID, but unfortunately a lot of folks take completely dorsal photos, and all you can tell from those is that it’s Magicicada. Lateral photos are better, but the ventral shot is the best for ID. Once in a while, especiall…

I don’t know if any of us already referenced this helpful species reference page above, so adding here ftr: https://cicadas.uconn.edu/species/# Edit: also, “local color” (from UMD) even including link to tshirts: https://cicadacrewumd.weebly.com/

Hi everyone, Me and a couple other users are looking into more consistent ways to identify these species, and we have a strong hunch about the number of ridges on the cibarium, or the roundish thing that protrudes from the face of the cicada. If you can, please take a photo of the cibarium from a d…

Magicicada Brood X in-hand ID tips?

Nature Talk

roshan2010 March 17, 2021, 1:13pm 2

Cicadamania.com gives the best info. As for photo angles, I would make sure to get one of the underside of the abdomen and the area between the eye and wing.

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Magicicada Brood X in-hand ID tips?

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