Cicadas and God

Brood X, also known as the Great Eastern Brood, of cicadas has emerged from the ground, in vast numbers, in at least the following parts of North America: Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and other places. See the Wikipedia article on this brood, and a fine article on CBS News. This blog post indicates that the Greek poet, Homer, mentioned them (and indicates that they are found outside of North America.)

There are several species of cicada. In fact, the Great Eastern Brood includes three species.

Cicadas and God?

I'd like to muse briefly about a couple of questions:

Why do cicadas emerge from the ground and become adults, every seventeen years? (Some types emerge every 13 years.)

Why are there so many of these insects?

Why 17 years? 

The correct answer is that we don't know. There are various speculations about the emergence cycle, but we don't. Nor, so far as I'm aware, do we know what timing mechanism triggers emergence and adulthood. I would guess that the insects could be ready for emergence and sexual maturity in a shorter time than 17 years. (Actually, one source says that parts of Brood X emerged 4 years early, in 2017.)

If small numbers of the insects emerged in, say, 15 or 19 years, it would be more difficult for them to find mates, hence there would be expected to be selection pressure on emerging with the vast majority. Some scientists believe that the long time underground means that the insects are protected from unusually cold outdoor temperatures. Perhaps.

Why so many? 

This source indicates that Brood IX, which became adults in 2020, had a population density of 1.5 million adults per acre.

Again, we don't know for sure why there are so many cicadas. Probably the large numbers mean that predators can't catch and eat them all, especially if the predators can't "count on" that same food source every year. So many of the insects escape, and are able to reproduce.

Psalm 104 says "24 Yahweh, how many are your works! In wisdom, you have made them all. The earth is full of your riches. 25 There is the sea, great and wide, in which are innumerable living things, both small and large animals." (World English Bible, public domain) The Psalmist doesn't mention cicadas, or even locusts, which occur in areas near Israel, in vast numbers. But the "full of your riches" and "innumerable living things" could refer to cicadas. Their presence, loud as they are, is one indication that God is bountiful, one of many. Like the stars above, the vast numbers of insects on the surface indicate God's majesty and power.

Cicadas are not dangerous. They do attack young twigs of certain trees -- that's where the females lay their eggs, which develop into nymphs, or larvae, which fall to the ground, where the animals spend their 17 years of larvahood. But they don't bite humans, or carry diseases.

The noise made by males, as part of courtship, is almost overpowering. There are a lot of cicadas, and each male makes a good bit of noise. Currently, it's impossible to go outside in Maryland, whre I live, without hearing that loud hum constantly. They can also be heard inside our dwelling, even with all the windows shut.

Thanks for reading.

Added, June 7, 2021: Thanks to a reader for this link, which is from The Washingtonian, and says that there are so many cicadas in the DC area that they are showing up on weather radar.

Norman Borlaug, Nobel prize winning botanist, dies

Norman Borlaug, architect of the Green Revolution, has passed away, at age 95.

The categories for the Nobel Prizes were mostly determined by the will of Alfred Nobel. A number of geneticists, such as Watson and Crick, have won or shared in the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, but there is no prize in genetics. There is no prize in zoology, or botany. A few zoologists have won the Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Borlaug, a botanist, made scientific and agricultural contributions of such importance that he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

What did Borlaug do? What is the Green Revolution? Put simply, Borlaug worked, for many years, on improving crop yields in third world countries. Much of his work was in the field in those countries. There is a chart included in the Wikipedia article on the man that dramatically shows the effect of the work of Borlaug and his colleagues. Wheat yields in Mexico, according to the chart, increased by more than four-fold since 1950. Borlaug's techniques involved increased fertilizer and other agricultural techniques which had not been used very much in third world countries, and breeding crops that could take advantage of these techniques. It seems clear that Borlaug's work kept many people, probably many millions, from starvation.

Borlaug's work has not been without controversy. Critics have claimed that Borlaug's techniques have worked to the advantage of agribusiness companies, made third world farmers too dependent on seed that they may not always be able to afford, and harmed the environment. There is some truth in all these claims, but Borlaug believed that producing more food was more important. He has also put forward the Borlaug Hypothesis, which states that improving crop yields makes deforestation less likely. He has stated that population growth is one of the important reasons why people don't have enough food.

Science is sometimes accused of being too divorced from people's real needs. Maybe so. What, if any, is the practical value of string theory? But discoveries that, at first, seem only interesting to specialists, or irrelevant to human physical or economic needs, often turn out to be of immense practical use. One example is Mendel's work in studying how some characteristics of peas were inherited. I doubt if Mendel, or Mendel's contemporaries, had any idea that his discoveries would make tremendous advances in agriculture and medicine possible. Without Mendel, no Borlaug. Science is also a way of learning about God. Psalm 19:1-4 and Romans 1:20 tell us that how nature works is one of the ways God is revealed to us.

I'm not sure Borlaug's work has helped us to know God better, but it has helped lots of people stay alive, so that they have a chance of learning about Him. We should be grateful for his work.

Thanks for reading.