Vanderbilt University mathematician Glenn Webb is available to discuss what is so magical about the number 17 for Brood X cicadas, emerging by the billions this month across the Eastern and Southeastern United States.
"It's all about prime numbers--broods of cicadas emerge every 13 or 17 years," Webb said. "Cicadas try to outsmart their predators. If they emerged in non-prime numbered years, then they would overlap with the emergence of their predators and decrease their chance of survival."
Webb is a professor of mathematics. He published his theory about cicadas in 2001 in the scientific journal Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems.
RSS