CINCINATTI, OH - Cicadas have emergered in Ohio and thousands of people are tracking their every move.

• Gene Kritsky, Ph.D. is the Dean of the School of Behavioral and Natural Sciences at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinatti and has studied cicadas for more than 40 years.
• You can track cicadas via the Cicada Safari smartphone app.
• This year's group of 17-year cicadas are classified as brood eight.

"When they do come out, they come out in these enormous numbers, but they attract all sorts of attention and then they're gone," Gene Kritsky, Ph.D. said. "Most people forget about them at that time. And then they come up again, and [people] may have more children. They might be married. Generational things happen and it's like a mental time capsule," Kritsky said.

After studying the insect for multiple decades, Kritsky found a way for others to join in. With the help of his colleagues at Mount St. Joseph University, they created Cicada Safari.

The app allows you to share photos of the cicadas that you find. The app also collects important information, like when and where the cicada was found, for researchers.

There are different types of cicadas. Certain classifications return every 17 years and others return every 13 years. The insects are further specified by their grouping, referred to as a "brood".

Brood 10 of the 17-year cicada will emerge in 2021. According to Kritsky more than 6 billion of those cicadas emerged in 2004.

The app has more than 8,000 users and is free on the App Store and Google Play Store.