Up close and personal, cicadas display Nature's artwork. Discerning beholders find beauty in bugs.

With rich reds, gentle greens and basic blacks, Nature's screaming, crawling artwork is the epitome of rare beauty — at least in the eyes of some beholders. To others, it may seem just creepy.

It's a colorful, ever-changing canvas of bugs. Lots of them.

A once-in-221-year convergence of two broods of periodical cicadas are emerging at the same time. The big effect of the cicadas is the sheer numbers. Trillions are expected to populate 16 states by mid to late June. They can be overwhelming, messy and loud.

But individually, up close and personal, a cicada has splashes of color, subtle shapes and that special something that some scientists and artists say translate to beauty. Even if to the average person it's just a bug.

To artists and scientists, cicadas are more awe-inspiring than awful.

Periodical cicadas are “more otherworldly-looking” than other insects and then the fact they come out every 13 or 17 years adds to their allure, making “them feel like something out of a science fiction movie,” said Jonathan Monaghan, a Washington, D.C.-based visual artist.

“Up close, there is a subtle beauty, particularly with their vibrant cadmium red eyes,” Monaghan said in an email. “Visually, they are at their best freshly molted because there is more contrast on their bodies, showing off some really interesting patterns. Overall though, I still think they are rather goofy looking.”

When collage artist Luis Martin, a self-described art engineer in Brooklyn, first saw cicadas, he was entranced.

“They were just so beautiful and diaphanous that I kind of fell in love,” said Martin, who sported a cicada bolo tie during a Zoom interview. “It looked like a fairy.”

But it's a love/fear kind of thing. They also seem scary, he said.

“It kind of goes back to these beautiful colors that we tend to think is kind of ugly, right? Because they’re brown, they’re kind of metallic, kind of like alien,” Martin said. “As a brown person myself I find them absolutely beautiful. I can totally see myself in them.”

Not just himself, but Frida Kahlo, Martin said. He could see the artist's signature eyebrows in the close-up cicada face images.

Scientists are even more mesmerized.

“There's a lot of things in the world today to get freaked out about. Cicadas aren't one of them,” said Mount St. Joseph University biologist Gene Kritsky, who wrote a book on this year's dual emergence. “They're beautiful insects. They've got these red eyes, black bodies, orange-colored veins on these membranous wings. I love the way they come up in these big numbers. I like that I can predict when they come out. It's a scientific experiment every time.

"But what I really like about them, they got me tenure.”

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The veins of an adult periodical cicada's translucent wings are silhouetted by a distant building light, shortly after shedding its nymphal skin, Saturday, May 18, 2024, in Charleston, Ill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

An adult periodical cicada, just after shedding its nymphal skin, is visible in the grass late Sunday, May 12, 2024, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

An adult cicada periodical cicada sheds its nymphal skin on a tree, Friday, May 17, 2024, in Charleston, Ill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

An adult periodical cicada clings to a peony flower on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Charleston, Ill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

An adult periodical cicada, just after shedding its nymphal skin, climbs over other nymphal shells at the base of a tree on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Charleston, Ill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A detail of an adult periodical cicada's wings and anus, shortly after it shed its nymphal shell, is seen late Friday, May 17, 2024, in Charleston, Ill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A close-up of an adult periodical cicada's compound eye, shortly after it shed its nymphal shell, is visible on Saturday, May 18, 2024, in Charleston, Ill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The underside of a periodical cicada is visible on Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A periodical cicada is visible on a leaf Friday, May 10, 2024, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

An adult periodical cicada, in the process of shedding its nymphal skin, is visible on Saturday, May 11, 2024, in Cincinnati. There are two large compound eyes, which are used to visually perceive the world around them, and three small, jewel-like, simple eyes called ocelli at center. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A periodical cicada appears in a hay field at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site on Sunday, May 19, 2024, in Lerna, Ill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

An adult periodical cicada waves its legs as it climbs over an iris in the afternoon sun on Friday, May 17, 2024, in Charleston, Ill. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — One is a wildly popular, seemingly happy-go-lucky YouTuber from Cyprus. The other is a brash, fringe figure of Spain's far right who rails against unauthorized immigrants. They both are new members of the European Parliament thanks to their savvy use of video-based social media.

YouTuber and TikToker Fidias Panayiotou is a 24-year-old with no political experience and no formal higher education who rode the wave of his online popularity — and public anger at the country's political elites — all the way to one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament.

He says he’ll keep using social media “as my biggest weapon to use” when he formally takes up his new job as a legislator in Brussels and Strasbourg, France.

Widely addressed by his first name, Fidias secured a remarkable one in five votes cast in Sunday’s election without the support of any political party — until now, thought to be the be-all and end-all of getting elected in any political contest in Cyprus.

Fidias sent shockwaves through the Cypriot political system by running a campaign in which he took no political positions, made no promises or even presented a program for his time in office.

“It seems now that people are hungry not for political positions, but for true people that are not lying (but) saying the truth,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in English, the language he uses for most of his posts.

While Fidias avoided strong political positions and was already widely known for his online high jinks, Spaniard Alvise Pérez was mostly unknown until he leveraged his diatribes on Instagram and Telegram against the alleged dangers of immigration. He also railed against claims of widespread corruption among politicians to score not one, but three of the 61 seats Spain gets in the European Parliament.

The common factor between the Alvise and Fidias is that both hit the bullseye thanks to their mastery of social media to garner support among young people, many of whom may have been indifferent to politics.

“This is not just a Spanish phenomenon or only about a YouTuber in Cyprus,” Steven Forti, a professor of history at Barcelona’s Autonomous University and expert on the far right, told the AP.

Forti said the creation of “digital subcultures” around unorthodox candidates had been critical to the rise of Donald Trump in the United States and, more recently, Javier Milei in Argentina, as well as far-right figures across Europe. But this dynamic has been turbocharged by the increasingly video-based trends in social media.

“The newer types of digital platforms like TikTok and Instagram have clearly accelerated” the fragmentation of politics, Forti said, because they help the far right achieve its two main objectives of disseminating their ideas very quickly and making themselves appear as everyday, normal people.

Fidias has spent the last five years boosting his popularity with outrageous video posts of him spending wads of cash in Vietnam, living a week in an airport for free, and burying himself alive for 10 days.

With over 5 million followers across all social media platforms, according to Fidias, that online footprint served him well when he decided to throw his hat into the election ring. He said he learned to play the social media game through trial and error and to understand what makes videos go “viral” online.

“At first I didn’t like what I saw in politics. So if you don’t like what you see, I think you need to become the change that you want to see,” said Fidias.

By his own admission, his online popularity only gave a segment of Cypriot voters — who are deeply disenchanted with the perceived corruption of a party system that has operated on a favors-for-votes basis for decades — an outlet to vent their anger and chastise the country’s political caste.

“It will be a lie to say that it was only the social media. I think it played the biggest factor, but it was a magnifying glass to what I really am,” he said.

Nicholas Papadopoulos, leader of the centrist Democratic Party, which lost its lone European Parliament seat, told Cypriot state radio on Tuesday that the vote clearly sent a “message of disappointment, of protest, of desperation, of anger” that targeted the country’s entire political system.

Political analyst Haridimos Tsoukas echoed Papadopoulos, saying one in five Cypriot voters wanted to make their point by sticking “their tongue out to the political system, not just in protest, but to express disgust in an ostentatious way.”

Alvise, which is a pen name, also successfully tapped into an irreverent vibe. He ran under the name “The Party Is Over” (“Se acabó la fiesta”) and with a logo of a cartoon squirrel wearing a Guy Fawkes mask that has long become associated with various so-called anti-system movements. Fawkes was an Englishman who tried to bomb the British Parliament on Nov. 5, 1605.

Forti said Alvise, like Milei, wanted to connect young people by projecting an image of being equal parts entertaining and rebellious. But he warns that the fun veneer is designed to deliver a hard-line message.

Alvise declares himself an admirer of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele and says he would like to build a mega-prison like the one the central American leader is raising. Many of his posts are honed to fan fears about immigration, even when the country’s economic authorities say more foreign workers are needed to prop up the public pension system.

“A field full of tomatoes now needs more paperwork to leave the farm than an illegal immigrant needs to enter the country,” Alvise told a hooting crowd after “The Party Is Over” won over 4% of the ballots cast in Spain and pulled in 800,000 votes.

Alvise has shocked Spain’s far-right Vox party, which earned six seats in the election but it would have likely done much better if Alvise had not launched his rogue venture.

While Alvise's rhetoric points to a drift toward illiberal rule, Fidias sees his unexpected triumph as democracy turning a corner toward a more direct connection between between voters and those they elect. He said social media empowers citizens by giving them a real, direct voice, “not just to follow what the TV says.”

“They can comment on the video, they can share it, they can make a video and respond to it. So it’s kind of a more direct democracy," he said about his modus operandi.

Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain.

Alvise Perez, leader of "The Party Is Over" ("Se acabó la fiesta") poses for a photo in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, June 13, 2024. One is a wildly popular, seemingly happy-go-lucky YouTuber with no political experience from Cyprus. The other is a brash, fringe figure of Spain's far right who rails against unauthorized immigrants. They are now new members of the European Parliament thanks to their savvy use of the potential of video-based social media. (AP Photo/Andrea Comas)

Alvise Perez, leader of "The Party Is Over" ("Se acabó la fiesta") poses for a photo in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, June 13, 2024. One is a wildly popular, seemingly happy-go-lucky YouTuber with no political experience from Cyprus. The other is a brash, fringe figure of Spain's far right who rails against unauthorized immigrants. They are now new members of the European Parliament thanks to their savvy use of the potential of video-based social media. (AP Photo/Andrea Comas)

Fidias Panayiotou, right, speaks to his supporters after elected in the European Elections in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Sunday, June 9, 2024. Panayiotou, a popular YouTuber and TikToker who's humorous and occasionally obnoxious posts have earned him tens of thousands of followers has stunned Cyprus' political world by appearing to wrest one of six seats allotted to the island nation in the European Parliament from traditional political powerhouses. (AP Photo/Philippos Christou)

FILE - Fidias Panayiotou speaks to his supporters after elected in the European elections in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on June 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Philippos Christou, File)

Popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou holds his cell phone after his proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament at the Filoxenia Conference Center in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. The 24-year-old Cypriot says he will continue using social media in his new job as a member of the European Parliament because he sees it as "my biggest weapon to use" in affecting the kind of change he wants to see on issues such as education. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

A woman takes a selfie with popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou after his proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament at the Filoxenia Conference Center in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. The 24-year-old Cypriot says he will continue using social media in his new job as a member of the European Parliament because he sees it as "my biggest weapon to use" in affecting the kind of change he wants to see on issues such as education. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou speaks to the Associated Press after his proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament at the Filoxenia Conference Center in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. The 24-year-old Cypriot says he will continue using social media in his new job as a member of the European Parliament because he sees it as "my biggest weapon to use" in affecting the kind of change he wants to see on issues such as education. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou speaks to the Associated Press after his proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament at the Filoxenia Conference Center in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. The 24-year-old Cypriot says he will continue using social media in his new job as a member of the European Parliament because he sees it as "my biggest weapon to use" in affecting the kind of change he wants to see on issues such as education. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou speaks to the Associated Press after his proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament at the Filoxenia Conference Center in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. The 24-year-old Cypriot says he will continue using social media in his new job as a member of the European Parliament because he sees it as "my biggest weapon to use" in affecting the kind of change he wants to see on issues such as education. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Orthodox priest, father Kiprianos, left, and the mother Eirini Panayiotou, right, of the popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament, arrive at the Filoxenia Conference Center in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. The 24-year-old Cypriot says he will continue using social media in his new job as a member of the European Parliament because he sees it as "my biggest weapon to use" in affecting the kind of change he wants to see on issues such as education. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou , third from left, stands with the others five elected, during his proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament at the Filoxenia Conference Center in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. The 24-year-old Cypriot says he will continue using social media in his new job as a member of the European Parliament because he sees it as "my biggest weapon to use" in affecting the kind of change he wants to see on issues such as education. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Popular YouTuber and TikToker with millions of online followers Fidias Panayiotou proclamation as the winner of one of six seats allotted to Cyprus in the European Parliament, arrives at the Filoxenia Conference Center in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. The 24-year-old Cypriot says he will continue using social media in his new job as a member of the European Parliament because he sees it as "my biggest weapon to use" in affecting the kind of change he wants to see on issues such as education. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

Alvise Perez, leader of "The Party Is Over" ("Se acabó la fiesta") poses for a photo in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, June 13, 2024. One is a wildly popular, seemingly happy-go-lucky YouTuber with no political experience from Cyprus. The other is a brash, fringe figure of Spain's far right who rails against unauthorized immigrants. They are now new members of the European Parliament thanks to their savvy use of the potential of video-based social media. (AP Photo/Andrea Comas)