As cicadas descend upon Illinois, scientists seek to understand cascading food web impacts

In a wooded clearing in Lake Forest, a team of researchers crouched close to the grass. They watched as hundreds of ants crawled over seeds, sipped sugar water and indulged in a seasonal treat: cicadas. Ants’ foraging activities may seem trivial. But to these scientists, they’re a gateway to unraveling the little-known impact on forest food webs when billions of cicadas emerge from the ground in Illinois. “We’re trying to look at the interconnectedness of all of this,” said researcher Sean B. Menke, an ant expert and biology professor at Lake Forest College. It’s one of the many unknowns surrounding [...]