The Cicada?s Love Affair With Prime Numbers
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Summary
The subsequent decline in hares can lead to a drop in the swollen predator population; fewer predators can then result in more hares surviving to reproduce; and the cycle begins again.Now, imagine an animal that emerges every twelve years, like a cicada. Cicadas that emerge at prime-numbered year intervals, like the seventeen-year Brood II set to swarm the East Coast, would find themselves relatively immune to predator population cycles, since it is mathematically unlikely for a short-cycled predator to exist on the same cycle.
As said here by Patrick Di Justo