neve hopman
Ecophysiological Responses to Climate Change in Cicadas
Physiological Entomology: Volume 44, Issue 2, “Insect Adaptation to Climate Change”, June 2019, pp 65–76.
Abstract
In a cicada season so loud that I can’t sleep I move you into the house by the botans. It’s pre-decorated, on a street we’ve never stood on. I stay the night because it’s Valentine’s and we don’t want to be alone. You have a car now and on days between downpours we go to the pool and pretend everything’s novel. We unlock untouched areas and stay away from the suburb we shared in the sun as shells of ourselves.
Effects of climatic factors on physiology
They say there’s more of them out than ever because winters are warmer. Increasing temperatures are accelerating their growth and shortening their life cycles like your old flatmate’s diet of chicken and rice on steroids. I quote my reference as a reel, but the evidence is in the floods we watch on our screens and the screams of tymbals we play Kesha over.
Nymphs and larvae
At seven, I waltzed round the garden with a yoghurt container, plucking shells from trees. I puppeted them into friend groups and made them break up with each other. My brother turned them into glitter. I didn’t know why something inside him was always angry. I saved the ones he hadn’t seen. Mum called us to dinner and I sealed them in my yoghurt container storm shelter for years.
Sexual dimorphism
It’s only males that make noise, of course. Screaming trickle-down economics fuck me and make me CEO of the system. The females cut slits into tree twigs and branches to hide their babies from the racket, but everyone’s got to leave the nest eventually.
Emergence
You came to meet me in the tropics after we graduated. Rhino beetles, floury bakers, and cane toads soundtracked our festival-free summer. At 40 degrees nothing was ever clean. We ogled the lifeguards like they ogled us and forgot to remember anyone but ourselves. We emailed our exes and floated outside of the soil they wanted us to stay in. Schooners of gold made passes we didn’t ask for, and when we burnt we peeled off the skin they didn’t ask to touch. The lightning storms came once a week and we got caught in downpours walking to work. We watched The Endless Summer in the yoga hall and planned how to keep running with the seasons. We flew across the country, we flew to another, we flew, we flew, we flew. We ticked the box to plant a pine tree where there used to be natives.
Adaptation to precipitation
Heavy rain during cicada eclosion is likely to cause a fatal defect to fragile expanding adults. Heavy rain during Twisted is likely to accelerate the spread of the ninth wave. Cicadas can’t fly in the rain, and girls get stuck in mud with boys they don’t like.
Conclusions
I walk home with my headphones in. I count the carcasses on the glistening footpath, on the road. The endless summer got rained out. You and I came back to get real jobs and face the feverish future. If winters are warmer maybe this time we won’t get seasonal. I see your old crush at a potluck, and my ex in a park. I see you on Thursdays and Sundays, and Fridays turned Saturdays. We knock about a mosh we used to know, glow stuffy and bizarre, and tell ourselves we shed our shells and came back raw.
Neve Hopman is a bush person/poet/activist/tea lover/professional gallivanter. She is currently studying an MFA at the IIML and more of her poetry can be found in Starling Issue 19 and on Bad Apple.