Seth Borenstein, Carolyn Kaster, Marshall Ritzel and Kathy Young teamed up, using creativity, tenacity and multiformat collaboration to bring a fresh perspective to a widely covered natural phenomenon happening every 17 years.
Borenstein, an AP science writer, had done cicada stories before and knew the timing would be tricky. The bugs emerge only when the temperature is right, usually in mid-May. He and Ritzell, an animator and video journalist on the Health and Science team, began hours of Zoom interviews with bug scientists in mid-March.
Meanwhile, Washington-based photographer Carolyn Kaster made it her mission to document the bugs she called “beautifully weird.” She had first encountered the Brood X cicadas 17 years ago in Pennsylvania and knew they would be a challenging subject — if she could find them.
University of Maryland entomologist Paula Shrewsbury displays a handful of cicada nymphs found in a shovel of dirt in a suburban backyard in Columbia, Md., April 13, 2021. These cicadas of Brood X have been here for 17 years, quietly feeding off tree roots underground, not asleep, just moving slowly, waiting for their body clocks tell them it is time to come out and breed.
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
An adult cicada sheds its nymphal skin on the bark on an oak tree on the University of Maryland campus in College Park, Md., May 4, 2021. Scientists say Brood X of cicadas is one of the biggest for these insects, emerging every 17 years.
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
University of Maryland entomologists Paula Shrewsbury, left, and Michael Raupp sift through a shovelful of dirt to pick out cicada nymphs in a suburban backyard in Columbia, Md., April 13, 2021. “In the 17th year these teenagers are going to come out of the earth by the billions if not trillions. They’re going to try to beat everything on the planet that wants to eat them during this critical period of the nighttime when ... they’re just trying to be adults, shed that skin, get their wings, go up into the treetops, escape their predators,” Raupp says.
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
A cicada nymph is seen in an emergence tunnel in a shovelful of dirt in a suburban backyard in Columbia, Md., April 13, 2021. America is the only place in the world that has periodic cicadas that stay underground for either 13 or 17 years, says entomologist John Cooley of the University of Connecticut.
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
After returning cicada nymphs the the soil where they found them, University of Maryland entomologists Michael Raupp and Paula Shrewsbury gently pat the dirt over them in a suburban backyard in Columbia, Md., April 13, 2021.
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
Undergraduate student Virginia Borda gathers soil temperatures at 8 inches below the surface as part of a class project to test the effects temperature on the time and density of cicada emergence, on the University of Maryland Campus in College Park, Md. , April 20, 2021. The cicadas only emerge in large numbers when the ground temperature reaches 64 degrees.
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
University of Maryland student Virginia Borda gathers soil, temperature, GPS coordinates and other data as part of a class project to measure urban heat island effects on the time and density of cicada emergence, in College Park, Md., April 20, 2021.
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
An adult cicada hangs upside down just after shedding its nymphal skin, on the University of Maryland campus in College Park, Md., May 5, 2021.
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
The translucent wings of an adult cicada are seen just after the insect shed its nymphal skin, on the University of Maryland campus in College Park, Md., May 5, 2021.
AP Photo / Carolyn Kaster
Kaster joined Borenstein and video freelancer Alyssa Schukar on an interview in Columbia, Maryland, and then reached out to an EPA scientist and photographed University of Maryland students who were sticking thermometers 8 inches into the ground to record soil temperatures and find the places where cicadas would soon be emerging.
She even persuaded photo editor Jon Elswick to let her dig in his backyard. She found some nymphs and stored them in Tupperware, so she could photograph them as they matured. For a week, she went out every night looking for mature bugs and their telltale red eyes, and she made Borenstein promise to capture any mature bugs he found.
Adding a key element, Health & Science video journalist Kathy Young and Ritzel joined forces to produce an animated video explainer on the life cycle of cicadas. The animation, guest-narrated by Allen Breed, was built around the colorful soundbites of a University of Maryland entomologist describing the cicadas’ life cycle.
The team’s package was timed perfectly, just as the bugs were starting to emerge in some places. It included a newsroom-ready video by Young, Kaster’s striking photos and Borenstein’s lively story, with this summation of the spectacle: “It’s one of nature’s weirdest events, featuring sex, a race against death, evolution and what can sound like a bad science fiction movie soundtrack.“
He and Kaster followed up several days later with an illustrated FAQ explainer on cicadas.
The package created buzz on social media, getting tweeted out by Mia Farrow and Arianna Huffington and posted on Facebook — it was among the week’s most-viewed stories on AP News. The animation and the newsroom video were used globally, including South Korea and India among others.