Editing 2263: Cicadas

{{w|Cicada|Cicadas}} are a species of insect whose nymphs burrow underground and emerge as adults to reproduce several years later.  One common species in North America is the 17-year cicada, also known as the {{w|periodical cicada}}. These cicadas form distinct {{w|Periodical_cicadas#Map_of_brood_locations|broods}} which burrow and emerge as a group every 17 years, with different broods starting the cycle at different times.  This results in a couple of weeks every 17 years when the cicadas swarm in huge numbers, then vanish just as quickly when the adults die off.  Cicadas also make a distinctive buzzing sound, which makes their periodic appearance even more memorable.

In the comic, [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] have accidentally created 17-''second'' cicadas using {{w|genetic engineering}}.  This means that rather than seeing a massive swarm every 17 years that lasts for a few weeks, they have to deal with a swarm every 17 seconds that lasts for a few moments. This makes it very difficult for them to do their work, especially to figure out how the cicadas were created because the swarm keeps interrupting their work. Note that the comic has been drawn differently to most other straight four-panel comics, probably to highlight the interruptions of the buzzing swarm - see the [[#Transcript|transcript]]. Also see the [[#Trivia|trivia section]] below for more details on the 17-year cicadas. Those were referenced again in the title text of [[2633: Astronomer Hotline]].

It's worth noting that every 17th word in the comic is "bzzzzzzz", implying that every word spoken takes one second. The caption also includes 17 words (if "17" is one word).

 

This entire comic seems to only have been a lead-up to the "cicadian rhythm" punchline. This is an interesting suggestion since [[Randall]] has mentioned in an interview that he makes up the title text after completing the comic.{{Actual citation needed}} Seems like he made an exception here; unless he didn't.

The widely-accepted scientific explanation for the long and seemingly arbitrary 17-year lifecycle is that seventeen is a {{w|prime number}} - it's believed that this is an evolutionary adaptation against lifecycles of competitors taking easy advantage of the cicada as a food source (if a predator) or emerging early to dominate their shared food source (if a fellow feeder), since 17 years cannot be divided by any whole number of years other than itself and 1.

A 16-year cicada might find a creature with an 8-year, 4-year, or [[1602:_Linguistics_Club|biennial]] cycle could profit from it in a 'clash' of expectations, but only a cycle that is a multiple of 17 (by an identical accident of evolution, that must also match the 'beat' years of the Cicada to be useful) would affect the presumed ancestors of the comic-strip breed. Predators often work to yearly cycles of plenty and scarcity of food or can survive a low number of famine years between the better ones, but if they have less than one year of 'bounty' for every decade or so of 'normal' feeding then they cannot build up the numbers needed to threaten such prey that plays the long-game.

Other broods of cicada have 13-year lifecycles (the next lowest prime number), and would potentially clash for resources (or hybridize) only every 221 years. Even if this causes a single bad cycle, for both sub-species, the next cycle of appearance is their own once more (for each) and the respective populations have plenty of opportunity to recover from this event by the time a further two centuries pass.  Thus it is theorized the happenstance evolution of a period of dormancy that gives a cycle of a significantly large prime-number of years - though still low enough to ''survive'' that period - is ultimately more advantageous than any cousins who tried to evolve to a period with smaller factors/shorter harmonics.