I have been following the prompts for #mathyear, created by mathematician/illustrator Constanza Rojas-Molina and computer scientist/illustrator Marlene Knoche. For the "prime number" prompt earlier this year I was reminded of how cicada lifecycles famous employ prime numbers.
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'Prime cicadas' by Ele Willoughby
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I printed the first 25 natural numbers with primes in green and non-prime numbers in pink with a cicada. Periodic cicadas lay dormant for years. Then in the spring of either their 13th or 17th year, mature cicada nymphs emerge from underground synchronously, in huge numbers and the males fill the air with their droning chorus. It’s been postulated that lifecycles in prime numbers of years have an evolutionary advantage. It may be predator avoidance by making it impossible for predators to boom at a divisor of their lifecycles. Or, it may be that prime number lifecycles prevents hybridization between broods (who emerge in different years), and that this was particularly important during the Pleistocene glacial stadia when there was heavy selection pressure. We've just now seeing the Great Eastern Brood (Brood X) emerge this year! It has the greatest range and concentration of any of the 17-year cicadas.
(A small confession: the specific cicada in my print is a dog-day cicada, an annual cicada and not a member of the Magicicada genus of 13 and 17-year periodical cicadas. I’m taking a little artistic/entomological liberty.)
I've been seeing that this amazing or overwhelming event, and the beauty of cicadas, has definitely inspired many artists, so I thought I would do a round up of some I enjoy.
There are also, of course, artists inspired to make art from cicadas and their sloughed off carapaces. Some Japanese high schoolers even built action figures and Godzilla from cicadas shells.
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