For decades, Prof. Monte Lloyd was a trusted expert on questions about cicadas. With the country in the midst of a historic cicada emergence – both the 13-year and 17-year cicadas are emerging together in 2024 – we revisit a past WBEZ interview from the late UChicago scientist, here.
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Monte Lloyd, cicada expert, was the best ecology prof I ever had. Relentlessly curious. Always entertaining. Infectiously enthusiastic about his subject, whether that subject was population genetics, natural selection, or the best tasting plantains from Costa Rica. Going on a field trip with him was the stuff of legend. And he’d always bring along one or another of his kids. Because who’d want to miss out on such fun?
He had these slide carousels he’d lecture to in a kind of a cadence that was almost hypnotic. Then, when he’d give us a pop quiz each week, regular as clockwork every Friday, he’d use the same carousel slides in the same order and ask us to fill in the blanks for a missing word or phrase. Acing those quizzes was the easiest thing in the world. Anybody who was not sleeping (and nobody was sleeping) could get 100% (or close to it) every single time. And that was fine by him. Because weeding out pre-meds was not his goal. Teaching ecology was. And he was grand master of the realm.
He loved his subject, the natural world. He cared about his students, we lowly undergrads. And that reverence for the subject, and for the man, was reciprocated 100% by each and every one of us. In the dictionary next to the term “world’s foremost cicada expert” is a picture of Monte Lloyd.
For what it’s worth, the next time both these 13- and 17-year broods emerge together will be in 2245 (221 years from now). That makes this a much rarer occurrence than either a total solar eclipse in the USA (next one’s in 2044) or the return of Halley’s Coment (next time’s in 2061). I don’t plan on being around for either of those. But if you wanna get a taste of a few different broods of more than a trillion cicadas at once, it’s definitely time to plan your trip east in 2024.
Brood XIX was alive and well outside Nashville when we were there a couple weeks ago. And the map checks for Central PA – Dave was born in 1970 and that was a cicada year. My pregnant Mom driving the tractor as Dad sprayed the droves of cicadas in the fruit trees.
All quiet in BuckeyeLand until ‘33 or ‘38.
Haven’t thought of Monte Lloyd in a long time; he was a hoot, and always enthusiastic about nature!
The 13-yr brood emerged here in Chatham County, NC with the warm weather around the end of April and only died off a week or so ago. Police in Durham reported getting phone calls from folks claiming aliens had landed. Remember the whirring sound of old metal spinning tops? Add to it an entire crew of football referees blowing their whistles simultaneously, and make the whole thing as loud as a small jet engine. Only slightly quieter at night. Constantly. For six weeks. Awesome.