cicadas

It's not an assumption, it addresses the fact that cicadas and predators sometimes do hatch out in synchrony.

The starting point for my simulation has both the cicadas and the predators hatching out simultaneously, in year zero.

Even the crickets and cicadas have gone silent, waiting for a break in the stifling atmosphere.

There has been maybe half a dozen mice and voles, and maybe twice as many cicadas.

A word of advice if you're trying out cockroaches/crickets/cicadas for yourself: do something about the shell if it isn't very soft.

Some species critically depend on wildly unstable birth rates (grasshoppers and cicadas, but probably also deer and many other prey populations).

This prevents predators from synchronizing their life cycle to that of the cicadas.

And both grasshoppers and cicadas are famous for suddenly disappearing across enormous areas.

Me which has a whole bunch of other sounds like bees, cicadas, sheep, whales, and more.

Other year relationships between cicadas and predators show no advantage or disadvantage.

Change the line // are cicadas and predators both present at once?

No, not even years necessarily, but any scenario in which cicadas and predators hatch out in synchrony, regardless of the numbering of the years (as long as both cicadas and predators have the same year number applied).

"Oh sorry Mr Smith, those cicadas were underground when you bought the farm, pre-existing condition, denied."

Cicadas, I suppose, have a bit of a soft spot with me.