I'm a sixth grader and my name is Julian. Hello and welcome to my cicada page. I have been studying cicadas for the last two months. In most of my classes the topic of what we are talking about is cicadas. We have learned about some of their internal anatomy their external anatomy and their habits. Some cicadas only come out of the ground every seventeen years. Ours are called Brood X (which in Roman numerals are Brood 10). Cicadas come out every 17 years in mid May. They live underground for 17 years feeding off of tree roots and they grow. Then they come up when the ground temperature is 64 degrees. They come up at night and they climb a tree. At this time they are still nymphs. Then they shed their exoskeleton and they let their wings dry and in the morning they can fly. Then after a week they start their mating call and they reproduce. That is the only reason they come up. Then the females lay their eggs and the nymphs go back into the ground and 17 years later they do it again.