By RICK BORCHELT   Cicadas were all over the media this spring: Every newscast ran a story on the mass emergence of billions of periodical cicadas in the Midwest, recounting the cacophony of the...

By Josie Jack This spring brought us Brood X, the billions of periodical cicadas that haven’t seen the light of day for 17 years. Whereas annual cicadas appear each summer throughout the world, periodical...

By Fred Seitz   I recently received an email with a photo and the question “What is this?” As I looked at the photo of an approximately 4-inch-tall tower in the mud, my immediate thought was,...

Dear Miss Floribunda,   During the recent snow days, I went outside to make sure my shrubs weren’t damaged, and I noticed some little white oval-shaped things on the bark of my spindle tree, which...

Dear Miss Floribunda, I was about to order some fruit trees to plant this spring when I heard that we're going to have cicadas in our area this year. Are they anything like locusts? Will they destroy...

By FRED SEITZ — It’s hard to miss the daytime and evening melodies of our local insects, including an assortment of grasshoppers, crickets, katydids and cicadas. These orthopterans (the first three)...