Origins

Every year cicadas burst forth from the desert floor of the Las Vegas Valley, my hometown, emerging with the magnitude of a biblical plague. An image portending ecological and human devastation and suffering brought about and called upon by some oppressive pharaoh’s subjugation. A sign. A sound so significant that every year and over the decades, people of Las Vegas call the Nevada Department of Agriculture to complain about the noise.

Diceroprocta apache, the Apache cicada, was renamed the desert cicada in 2021 through the Entomological Society of America’s “Better Common Names Project.” A communications effort by the bug organizers of America to remove no longer acceptable descriptors of “cultures, populations, ethnicity, or race” from common names.

The scientific remains. Diceroprocta apache.