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Millions of cicadas to emerge after living underground for 17 years:
If you'd rather not think about murder hornets ruining your summer, you can always worry about swarms of cicadas invading the outdoors with their deafening buzz and molted brown husks.
This year, 1.5 million cicadas per acre will be popping up in parts of Virginia, North Carolina and West Virginia, according to scientists at Virginia Tech University. People who live in these areas will see a unique natural phenomenon that hasn't happened since 2004.
Depending on the species, cicadas either show up every year, or periodically (every 13 or 17 years). These particular periodical cicadas belong to a group called Brood IX.
"The timing of a 13- or 17-year cycle is one of the great mysteries of the insect world," scientists said in a Virginia Tech statement.
[...] "Communities and farms with large numbers of cicadas emerging at once may have a substantial noise issue," predicts Eric Day, an entomologist at Virginia Tech. "Hopefully, any annoyance at the disturbance is tempered by just how infrequent -- and amazing -- this event is."
Luckily, cicada broods tend to have short lifespans. They have four-to-six weeks of activity before they start dying off. So the cicadas' symphony of noise shouldn't last for the entire summer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Saturday May 23 2020, @07:28PM (14 children)
"The timing of a 13- or 17-year cycle is one of the great mysteries of the insect world"
No it's not, it's well documented and mathematically sensible.
If you come out every year, predators rely on your coming out every year, and eat you every year.
If you only out every second year, predators alternate between you and other species (even if that means they roam an entire continent and time their return for when you're spawning again).
Even if you only come out every 4th year, you catch the predators who roam on a 2 year basis.
So insects like this, by a process of natural selection, tend towards emerging prime-numbered years, even if they can't count.
As time goes by, the prime numbers in question get higher. 13 and 17 are consecutive prime numbers. Give it a million years, they'll come out at 17 and 19 year intervals.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2020, @10:07PM (13 children)
Why prime numbers? That makes no sense.
And predators need to eat, like, every fucking day or two, idiot. They don't save up for 2 or 3 years or whatever to feast on circada.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday May 23 2020, @10:18PM (1 child)
It's not that there are *no* predators in the off years. It's that when the predators suddenly get a lot of food, they reproduce more. Then the next year you've got a lot more predators. The details of how this might cause broods to converge towards prime numbers are not something I remember off the top of my head, but that's the general idea. AFAIK, the cicadas are particularly sensitive to this effect in ways that other creatures aren't, due to their multi-year juvenile phase and seasonal breeding.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @03:25AM
A population boom "echoes" in later generations. Lets say you have a predator species that reaches reproductive years in two years. One year, you have a big boom of prey, which means more already existing predators and that years new batch survive and have babies. Two years later, that batch of kids that survive, which will still be higher than the years before and after, have kids of their own, so you have another boom. This boom is smaller than the original one because of less resources and survival from the previous year but is usually still significant. That boom then repeats and slowly dampens out. By picking a prime number, you prevent other species from having their cycle match up to yours. There is also selection pressure to the prime numbers because it allows higher population densities and prevents hybridization.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @12:33AM (8 children)
I don't get it. Do people like you like to show the entire Internet what socialy inept, foul-mouthed ill-bread little shitfucks you are ?
If someone talked to me like that in person, I'd throw him out the nearest windows without even checking first what floor we're on.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @12:53AM (2 children)
Everyone is talking to you like that in their heads. It's a fucking wonder nobody let's slip - where THEIR fucking medals you self-rewarding pontificating shit? Huh?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @01:20AM (1 child)
That "self-rewarding pontificating shit" actually had parents that thought him some manners, unlike you apparently. That's why you'll remain an irrelevant socially-inept autistic basement-dwelling incel for the rest of your worthless, meaningless life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @04:19PM
Give yourself a fucking nother badge.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @01:24AM (4 children)
Wow! They may be sociallly inept, foul-mouthed ill-braid little shitfucks, but at least they aren't internet psychopaths and potential murderers!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:18AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @04:24PM (2 children)
Well if some idiot didn't start off spouting bullshit about prime numbers, then another bullshitter didn't jump in defending the FORM regardless of the SUBSTANCE, then none of this little soul-revealing chat needed to happen. You idiot, self-rewarding, superior, mid-management shithead psychopath.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @06:06PM (1 child)
Stay mad, sucka.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @07:22PM
Nah, the pwnage is complete.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Sunday May 24 2020, @12:36PM (1 child)
(headthump)
Do some basic research.
Prime numbers reduce the number of factors. If you only come out every 17 years, you avoid all the species that only come to your neck of the wood every 2 years. Or 3. Or 5. Or 7.
And animals do roam like that - everything from elephants to starlings have set routes that they follow over multiple years to ensure food sources have time to replenish before they circle back to them. If they did the same trip every year, by years 2 or 3, it'd be a wasteland. The things that can feed on BILLIONS of cicadas are no different, they can lay waste to entire areas if they just stay in one place, so they keep moving... and the cicadas are their bonanza meal. If they can predict their movement, the cicadas would die out, and then so would the predators.
Only millions of years, they've "worked out" each other's patterns - because when they over-consume both species die, so that particular pattern of eating is then naturally selected for.
But, of course, if you're not as big an idiot as I'm supposed to be, you could have done a two-second Google and read it yourself, couldn't you? And maybe you wouldn't confuse an individual for an entire species, either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @04:35PM
Look dipshit, it's the circadas trying not to bump into eachother that results in prime numbers.
They don't even bother about predators - that is solved by overwhelming with numbers.
But if circada-17 comes out at the same time as circada-13 then they compete with eachother too - God said no thanks and invented prime numbers.