Welcome to Getting Curious. I'm Jonathan Van Ness and every week I sit down for a 40 minute conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.

On today's episode, I'm joined by evolutionary biologist and anemologist Dr. Jessica Ware, an associate curator at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and an associate professor at the Richard Gilner Graduate School where I ask her.

Are bugs and insects the only ones having a hot girl summer?

Welcome to Getting Curious. I'm so excited for today's episode. There is a lot to digest and a lot to process in the world and sometimes you just need to get into that science so you can just keep learning but just give yourself a bit of variety.

So with that being said, welcome Dr. Jessica Ware. You are an entomologist and evolutionary biologist. You're an associate curator of the Odenata and non-hollumatabulous insect orders at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and you're an associate professor at the Richard Gilner Graduate School.

And this is also one of the most amazing things is you're also the VP elect of the Entomological Society of America and the president of the Worldwide Dragonfly Association.

You got credits on credits with a side of credits all in caps lock, like with some other pretty funds too. So thank you so much for taking your time to come talk to us Dr. Jessica Ware.

Thank you for having me. I got to say, if you call me and ask me to talk about Dragonfly's or insects, I will be there in five seconds.

Because I think talking about insects is one of the best and most fun past times. So I'm ready. I'm excited.

Oh, yeah. I can't wait. So, okay, this is kind of where this episode started from came from. This is why I wanted to have you on.

So I think, you know, we were all in quarantine and then we started reading those articles about all the cicadas coming up in Virginia and like West Virginia.

And then that made me think about this time in 1996 in Quincy, Illinois, like where I'm from.

And like my family had moved out to this farm. And I remember like the second week we got there. There was like, there was two garages and this like the second garage as we so called it was like covered in cicadas.

And there was like, and they said that year is like one of the like every seven year ones. But ever, but I lived there for like, you know, another like, what 11 or whatever, a long time.

I lived there for like another like however many years, so 2004 from 96. So yeah, eight years. And I never saw them again. So then I read about these ones and I hear there's these seven year ones.

And then there's these 17 what what gives with these cicadas. What even are they? And why are they doing this like hibernation adjacent cousin of hibernation.

I mean, in a way, they are really amazing, right, because they do have, you see a 13 years or 17 years. Maybe that's why you didn't see them because it's 13 or 17.

So there's no seven. There's no seven, but there are. So there's two kinds of cicadas. There's the periodical ones that come out in these batches, right. Like you describe, they're everywhere. You can shovel them up, you know.

And then there are the annual ones and their annual ones come out every year. So people sometimes get confused, I think, about which ones that they have. But you can tell them apart because the periodical ones, they so they all have BDIs, right.

They're very BDI creatures. But the periodical ones have red BDIs. And so that and they're a little bit smaller. So maybe those were probably the ones that you saw on your second garage.

And it's a really good strategy for them because they can avoid. So they live underground as nymphs and they suck on sap on, you know, plant juices, a suck on roots and rootlets.

And they mold five times to get larger until the soil temperatures around, you know, 64 degrees signals a cube. And they all emerge at once. And they think that maybe the reason why they do this is so that that way they could just basically use satiation as a strategy.

...