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Cicadas are back, but climate change is messing with their body clocks
Billions of cicadas are emerging across about 16 states in the Southeast and Midwest. Periodical cicadas used to reliably emerge every 13 or 17 years, depending on their brood. But in a warming world where spring conditions arrive sooner, climate change is messing with the bugs’ internal alarm clocks.
Scientists believe that cicadas count years through the change in fluid flow in tree roots, and when their year to emerge arrives, they stay underground until the soil temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit. Spring-like conditions now occur earlier, with the season warming 2 degrees Fahrenheit across the U.S. since 1970, according to Climate Central, a nonprofit researching climate change.
Spring arriving sooner means so are the cicadas. Last month, the cicadas’ return started in Georgia nearly two weeks ahead of schedule before spreading north as far as the suburbs of Chicago. The Southwest has experienced the most spring warming, with locations in Nevada, Texas, and Arizona exceeding 6 degrees Fahrenheit of spring warming since 1970, according to Climate Central.
“In 2021, they emerged 11 days — almost two weeks — earlier,” said biologist Gene Kritsky, who has been studying cicadas for decades. “This is true for Baltimore, for Washington, for Philadelphia, for Indianapolis.”
Cicada watchers used to be able to predict their emergence as easily as astronomers could predict the recent solar eclipse. But that has become more challenging as the cicadas’ patterns are changing as warm spring days happen more often.
ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images
In 2007, a midwinter warm spell in Ohio caused trees to prematurely start growing leaves, making the cicadas think an entire year had passed. Kritsky said this tricked them into counting the years wrong and, when true spring arrived months later, they emerged a year ahead of schedule.
“They had two fluid flows, so for them, it was 17 years,” said Kritsky. “They didn’t detect that there were only a few weeks between. They just detected that the fluid stopped and then started up again,” said Kritsky.
Once they do make it back out to the world, they live for just a few weeks with one goal in mind: to make sure the species survives.
“They come up in massive numbers to overwhelm their predators. So the predators can eat every cicada they want, and there’s still millions left to reproduce,” said Kritsky.
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The new Department of Government Efficiency, a group created by President-elect Donald Trump with the task of identifying ways to cut federal spending and headed by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is already taking resumes.
The request for job applicants was posted Thursday by the new X account for DOGE, which despite its heady mission isn’t an official government department. In his statement on Tuesday announcing the effort, Trump described Musk and Ramaswamy’s role as providing “advice and guidance from outside of government.”
It’s unclear where the funding for DOGE will come from or the size of its budget, as well as whether Musk, the world’s richest person, and Ramaswamy, who has an estimated net worth of $1 billion, will be paid for their efforts. The Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for information.
In the meantime, DOGE is starting to hire, according to the post on X, the social media service (formerly known as Twitter) owned by Musk. The account already has 1.2 million followers on the platform.
What qualifications is DOGE looking for?
The post didn’t disclose the specific educational or career experience it is looking for in applicants. Instead, it described the kind of person they want to hire: “We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.”
It added that it doesn’t want “more part-time idea generators.”
How can people apply for a DOGE job?
The post said that interested applicants should send a direct message, or DM, to the account with their CV, although the DOGE account wasn’t open to messages when the job notice was first posted.
“Off to a great start. ‘DM this account with an application’,” one person pointed out. “DMs not open.”
Even after the DOGE account opened to direct messages, not all X users could send their resumes because only verified accounts or accounts followed by DOGE are able to DM the account. The DOGE account currently doesn’t follow any other X users, and verification on the platform costs $84 a year.
Only the “top 1% of applicants” will be reviewed by Musk and Ramaswamy, the DOGE account added. The post didn’t specify how it will rank applicants.
What does a DOGE job pay?
The post didn’t specify the salary range or benefits.
What kind of response is the post receiving?
A mix of pointed questions, humor as well as support from fans of Musk and Trump.
“Anything over 40 hours will be paid overtime right?” one person posted on X in response to the job post.
Others posted tongue-in-cheek “qualifications,” with one person writing, “I’d love to join here’s my resume: – B+ in Science – JV soccer team (2 years) – Can eat >10 Oreos in one sitting – Owner of several Dogecoins – Can burp the alphabet – Can run fast (top 25% of class).”
Another touted his “104 IQ (4 points above highest score possible).”
Valentina Gomez, a Republican politician who posted a video of herself burning books in February, responded, “But I’m ready to cut & make a dent on that outstanding budget. TSI, IRS, ATF are the first to go.”
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