Surprising findings from UMSL's Cicada Mapping Project

Scientists in St. Louis share discoveries about the historic double emergence of cicadas in the summer of 2024.
“Total shock to us,” said ecologist Sara Miller, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “We weren’t finding cicadas through most of North St. Louis, we weren’t finding them in areas of the city that were quite old. And then just to find tons of them in this very new forest.”
That forest is the location of the failed Pruiit Igoe housing complex. Once demolished in 1976, the site remained vacant until the 1990s when it became a demolition landfill.
“There’s been quite a forest that has developed in the area where the project was taken down, and it’s filled with cicadas,” said Miller. “And it has served as sort of a source population for recolonizing parts of North St. Louis.”
Miller explained how they recruited citizens to be involved in the project, by using an app.
“We managed to get more than 800 observations."
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