As the Route 1 corridor awaits the emergence of the Brood X cicadas, all eyes are on College Park’s University of Maryland “Bug Guy.”
Entomologist Michael Raupp has long promoted his “Bug of the Week,” but these days all anyone wants to know about are the cicadas.
In recent weeks, Raupp has been featured in TIME magazine, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, “PBS NewsHour,” The Washington Post, and news outlets from Baltimore to New Jersey talking about Brood X.
Literally trillions of cicadas are expected to emerge from underground along the East Coast in May, part of a 17-year mating cycle in which they outsmart predators by simply overwhelming them with sheer numbers. Some have already shown up in College Park.
Though the swarm can be a bit much for some, Raupp encourages people to think big.
“This is a spectacular natural event that happens but just a few times in a human’s lifetime,” he told Baltimore magazine. “It’s going to be full of every interesting element of biology and natural history. There’s going to be birth, death, sex, adventure. And it’s coming to your own backyard.”
In fact, Raupp owes his second career to the cicadas. When Brood X last emerged in 2004, he was tasked with explaining them to the public, which led him to becoming the Bug Guy.
In that job, he makes appearances at science festivals, writes a regular column, runs a YouTube channel and does things like tell reporters what “Ant-Man” got wrong about ants.
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