Science researcher Dr. John Cooley has spent years studying cicadas (Yale, Michigan, UConn). He’s been working on mapping species boundaries and using species distribution models to understand biogeography. He’ll be the first one to tell you: cicadas aren’t locusts (and p.s. locusts are a type of grasshopper). And he’ll explain in a very friendly and easy to understand narrative how the female Magicicada septendecim lays up to twenty eggs in each nest (she can lay as many as 600 eggs!).
No wonder he’s the one (with colleague Prof. Chris Simon) behind the super cool and fun Cicada Tracker via WNYC’s website. The blog provides cicada taco recipes and instructions to make a DIY cicada detector. So what happens to a guy like Cooley post cicada swarmageddon? (His word, not ours.) He’ll graduate from the MBA program at UConn where he’s studying strategy and marketing. No doubt he’ll excel as that rare and valuable, um, creature in marketing strategy: he’ll be inclined to take the long view. Perfect for when you need to handle that aggressive venture capitalist who wants to see your projections 17 years out!
