LISLE (AP) – It was late morning when The Morton Arboretum’s Senior Horticulturist Kate Myroup arrived at the Children’s Garden with a special guest: a rare, blue-eyed female Magicicada cassini cicada, spotted earlier in the day by a visitor.
A lucky few saw the cicada last Friday at the arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, before its release back into the world in suburban Chicago to join its red-eyed relatives, the more common look for most cicada species, as the 2024 cicada emergence gets underway.
As the enclosure opened, the blue-eyed lady took flight into a tree. The unique bug then flew down to land on the pants of Stephanie Adams, plant healthcare leader. Intrigued young guests snapped photos.
“It’s a casualty of the job,” said Adams, who frequently is decorated with the bugs.
Collections manager of the Department of Entomology at the Smithsonian Institute Floyd W Shockley said the blue-eyed cicada is rare, but just how rare is uncertain. “It is impossible to estimate how rare since you’d have to collect all the cicadas to know what percentage of the population had the blue eye mutation,” he said.
