LISLE, Ill. (NEWSnet/AP) — Kate Myroup, senior horticulturist at The Morton Arboretum, arrived Friday with a special guest: a rare, blue-eyed female Magicicada cassini cicada, spotted earlier in the day by a visitor.
A few people saw the at the arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, before its release to join its more-common red-eyed relatives.
As the enclosure opened, the blue-eyed bug took flight into a tree, then landed on the pant leg of Stephanie Adams, plant health care leader. Guests snapped photos.
“It’s a casualty of the job,” said Adams, who frequently is decorated with the bugs.
Floyd W. Shockley, collections manager of the department of entomology at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, said the blue-eyed cicada is uncommon, but no one is certain of the degree of rarity.
“It is impossible to estimate how rare, since you’d have to collect all the cicadas to know what percentage of the population has the blue-eye mutation,” Shockley said.
Periodical cicadas emerge every 13 or 17 years. Only the 17-year brood is beginning to show in areas as far north as Lisle.
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