This story was originally published in The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Billions of cicadas that have spent 17 years underground are set to emerge across large areas of the eastern United States, bringing swarming numbers and loud mating calls to major towns and cities. The periodic cicadas—bugs with strikingly red eyes, black bodies and orange wings—burrow underground as nymphs and suck fluids from the roots of plants as they grow, eventually bursting into the open as adults in mass synchronized events. The last…
