Cicadas
Cicadas
[This comic is laid out in a variation of a regular four-panel comic. One wide panel is overlaid by two smaller panels, which are placed where the second and fourth panels would be. These panels are slightly offset so they extend above the wide panel.]
[Cueball and Ponytail are facing each other across a desk while having a conversation. Cueball is holding up a tablet in his hand while Ponytail is typing at a laptop on the desk.] Cueball: What can you tell from genome comparison? Ponytail: I think there's a duplication on the - Ponytail: Look out!
[An overlaid panel shows that the air is full of flying cicadas, many of which have landed on Cueball, Ponytail, the laptop, the tablet, and the desk. Ponytail and Cueball have their arms up in a futile attempt to shield themselves from the bugs, with Cueball having put the tablet down on the table.] Bzzzzzzz
[The cicadas are gone, and Cueball and Ponytail resume their conversation. Cueball has picked up the tablet again] Ponytail: - a duplication on the gene right before the cleavage site, so the resulting protein - Ponytail: Look out!
[An overlaid panel shows that the air is again full of flying cicadas, which have once again landed on Cueball, Ponytail, the laptop, the tablet, and the desk. Ponytail and Cueball have raised their arms to shield themselves again.] Bzzzzzzz
[Caption below the large panel:] Our genetics work has produced 17-second cicadas, but we're having a hard time figuring out how.
The widely-accepted scientific explanation for the long and seemingly arbitrary 17-year lifecycle is that seventeen is a 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 dominating 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 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.

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 periodical cicada . These cicadas form distinct 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 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 than most other straight four-panel comics, probably to highlight the interruptions of the buzzing swarm - see the transcript .
The title text is a pun on " circadian rhythm ." In particular, it might resemble something said to someone getting adjusted to a new sleep schedule. But here it is the 17 seconds interruption, not a time zone shift, that has to be adjusted for.
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.
[This comic is laid out in a variation of a regular four-panel comic. One wide panel is overlaid by two smaller panels, which are placed where the second and fourth panels would be. These panels are slightly offset so they extend above the wide panel.]
[Cueball and Ponytail are facing each other across a desk while having a conversation. Cueball is holding up a tablet in his hand while Ponytail is typing at a laptop on the desk.] Cueball: What can you tell from genome comparison? Ponytail: I think there's a duplication on the - Ponytail: Look out!
[An overlaid panel shows that the air is full of flying cicadas, many of which have landed on Cueball, Ponytail, the laptop, the tablet, and the desk. Ponytail and Cueball have their arms up in a futile attempt to shield themselves from the bugs, with Cueball having put the tablet down on the table.] Bzzzzzzz
[The cicadas are gone, and Cueball and Ponytail resume their conversation. Cueball has picked up the tablet again] Ponytail: - a duplication on the gene right before the cleavage site, so the resulting protein - Ponytail: Look out!
[An overlaid panel shows that the air is again full of flying cicadas, which have once again landed on Cueball, Ponytail, the laptop, the tablet, and the desk. Ponytail and Cueball have raised their arms to shield themselves again.] Bzzzzzzz
[Caption below the large panel:] Our genetics work has produced 17-second cicadas, but we're having a hard time figuring out how.
The widely-accepted scientific explanation for the long and seemingly arbitrary 17-year lifecycle is that seventeen is a 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 dominating 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 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.
