This week is a little different as we aren't discussing a bird, but rather the cicada phenomenon happening in Illinois right now. Maureen Turcatel of the Field Museum joins us to talk about the two different broods of cicadas both happening at the same time (the 13 year cicada and the 17 year cicada). We talk about how this is impacting birds, the rare blue-eyed cicada, and also the fungus that is making cicadas hyper-sexual. 

Maureen is an insect taxonomist and systematist, especially interested in the diversity and phylogeny of horse flies. Her research focuses on using museum specimens to perform revisionary work on horse flies. She is the collections manager of all insects at the Field Museum, so she was happy to jump on and answer all of our cicada questions, as well as talk about horseflies. 

Maureen joined John Bates, Shannon Hackett, RJ Pole, and Amanda Marquart for another episode of Birds of a Feather Talk Together. 

Please send us your questions for us to answer as well! You can send them to [email protected]

There was a cool segment on cicadas in the tv show The Americas with Tom Hanks, we hope this helps tell that story too!

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