Question
Veller et al. proposed that the long intervals between these plants’ flowerings evolved by repeated multiplications from a short initial life cycle, explaining the flowering periods’ having only small prime factors. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name these plants in which all members of a species around the world flower simultaneously at long intervals, with one species flowering every 120 years. Ensuing rodent booms often lead to famines and disease outbreaks.
ANSWER: bamboo [or Bambusoideae]
[10e] These North American insects are divided into “broods” in which all individuals in a given area simultaneously emerge from underground in huge numbers every 13 or 17 years.
ANSWER: periodic cicadas [or periodical cicadas; or Magicicada; reject “locusts”]
[10m] Bamboo and periodic cicadas use particularly extreme examples of this strategy, also exemplified by masting in trees, in which prey occurs in high numbers briefly and infrequently to overwhelm predators’ ability to eat them.
ANSWER: predator satiation [or predator saturation]
<Gerhardt Hinkle, Biology>
Summary
| 2023 Penn Bowl (Harvard) | 10/21/2023 | Y | 3 | 10.00 | 100% | 0% | 0% |
| 2023 Penn Bowl (Mainsite) | 10/21/2023 | Y | 7 | 10.00 | 100% | 0% | 0% |