Cicada Shell

While looking around this afternoon, I uncovered an old exoskeleton shed by a cicada. It's in pieces now but still very cool. While in the nymphal stage, living underground, cicadas shed their skin five times. This is called eclosion. When they emerge from the ground, they shed their skin for the final time and become adults. This final molting is called ecdysis. Cicadas spend most of their life as nymphs. Cicadas can be periodical, meaning that their emergence as adults is synchronized (they do so collectively after 13 or 17 years underground), or annual, meaning that there is always an emergence each year for some of the cicada population. In my state of South Carolina, periodical cicadas tend to emerge in late April. Except for the 13- and 17-year cicadas, most cicadas live from 2 to 8 years. Annual (or "dog-day") cicadas emerge in late summer (in the "dog days" of the year). We seem to have cicadas around every summer. This shell may be left over from last year's emergence of 13-yr cicadas. If so, it's fairly well preserved.

It may be helpful to compare these images to Richard Fox's drawings on http://lanwebs.lander.edu/faculty/rsfox/invertebrates/tibicen.html. I've done my best to identify the parts, but the skeleton really needs to be complete to make a certain identification.

You can see some of the legs remain attached.

The main part of the body.

One of the compound eyes (only the outer covering, of course) is still attached to the head.

One of the forelegs, consisting from top to bottom of: pronotum, articular membrane, coxa, trochanter, femur, tibia, tarsus, and tarsal claws. 

The other foreleg, still attached.

An upside-down view of the remains of the abdomen, partially showing the underside, which consists of outer ridges called tergites and inner ones called sternites. The abdomen ends in a point (in this photo, at the top), formed by the final sternite and tergite, as well as the anus and genital chamber.

Here are some informative websites, mostly about periodical cicadas:
http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/Periodical/Index.html (periodical cicadas)
http://hydrodictyon.eeb.uconn.edu/projects/cicada/simon_lab/peet_pages/07_Sanborn.pdf (PowerPoint slides on morphology)
http://www.magicicada.org/magicicada_i.php (periodical cicadas)
http://www.state.sc.us/forest/idcicada.htm (about the 2011 emergence of 13-yr cicadas in SC)

We also have annual cicadas in our neighborhood, as in other states:
http://insects.tamu.edu/fieldguide/aimg82.html (Texas)
http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/annual-cicadas-dog-day-cicadas (Missouri)
http://www.gpnc.org/cicadas.htm (Great Plains)