ST. LOUIS — It's crickets in south St. Louis...figuratively, that is. Cicadas there are so quiet, people are asking if they even showed up.
Kasey Fowler-Finn, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Biology at Saint Louis University studying specifically insect sounds, "how insects communicate with one another in order to coordinate reproduction," as she described it.
Fowler-Finn said there there are a few reasons why you may not be hearing them: "They sing at a very specific time of day." Typically, that's between the hours of 3-5 p.m.
Still not hearing them? "The second reason is they are just not as dense in the city and that's because we don't have the woods to support them," explained Fowler-Finn.
Have trees older than 13 years old in your area and still not hearing them? Fowler-Finn continued, "The third reason is you might hear the occasional one or two, but people don't recognize a single call necessarily."
Think you have what it takes to recognize a cicada sound? Fowler-Finn said there are a few more reasons you may not be hearing the once-every-13-year bugs, "or if there's soil disruption for construction or maybe there is heavy pesticide use, you might have a lack of cicadas there as well."
If you aren't hearing any, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
"I think it is a sign of urbanization and turnover land use," Fowler-Finn said, "so I think if you are concerned about that, then we need to work together to preserve natural areas."