LISLE, Illinois — With their bulging purple eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can appear scary and bizarre sufficient. However a few of them actually are sex-crazed zombies on velocity, hijacked by a super-sized fungus.
West Virginia College mycology professor Matt Kasson, his 9-year-old son Oliver, and graduate pupil Angie Macias are monitoring the nasty fungus, known as Massospora cicadina. It’s the just one on Earth that makes amphetamine — the drug known as velocity — in a critter when it takes over. And sure, the fungus takes management over the cicada, makes them hypersexual, trying to unfold the parasite as a sexually transmitted illness.
“They’re zombies, utterly on the mercy of the fungus,” mentioned College of Connecticut cicada researcher John Cooley.
This specific fungus has the most important identified genome of any fungus. It has about 1.5 billion base pairs, about 30 instances longer than most of the extra frequent fungi we all know, Kasson mentioned. And when these periodical cicadas stay underground for 17 years (or 13 years within the U.S. South), the spores typically keep down there with them.
“This was a mycological oddity for a very long time,” Kasson mentioned. “It’s bought the most important genome. It produces wild compounds. It retains the host energetic — all these quirks to it.”
Kasson determined to ask individuals from across the nation to ship in contaminated cicadas this yr. And regardless of an injured leg, Kasson, his son and Macias travelled from West Virginia to the Morton Arboretum exterior Chicago, the place others have reported the fungus that takes over a cicada’s nether components, dumping the genitalia and changing it with a white, gummy but flaky plug that’s fairly noticeable. The spores then fall out like salt from a shaker.
Contaminated cicadas are purported to be laborious to search out.
Ten seconds after she hops off the golf cart, Macias is within the bushes, wanting. She emerges victorious, hand within the air with a cicada, yelling “I bought one.”
“That was simply fortunate,” Oliver whines.
“Luck, huh? Let’s see you get one,” Macias replies.
Ten seconds later at a neighboring bush, Oliver finds one other. And only a bit after {that a} photographer finds a 3rd.
Kasson and his small staff collected 36 contaminated cicadas in his temporary Chicago space jaunt with individuals sending him one other 200 or so from throughout. He’s nonetheless ready for an RNA evaluation of the fungus.
Some cicada consultants have estimated perhaps one in 1,000 of the periodical cicadas are contaminated with this fungus, however it’s not far more than a guess. Mount St. Joseph College’s Gene Kritsky, a biologist who wrote the guide on this yr’s distinctive twin emergence, mentioned it could be skewed as a result of the wholesome cicadas keep greater up within the bushes.
This yr “the fungus is about the way it at all times is,” Cooley mentioned in an e mail. “It’s not tremendous frequent.”
There’s debate amongst scientists if the fungus infects extra cicadas deep within the soil popping out of the bottom after 13 or 17 years or if it infects the newly hatched nymphs on the best way underground for greater than a decade.
This fungus isn’t the kind of parasite that kills its host, however as an alternative it must preserve it alive, Kasson mentioned. Then the contaminated cicadas try to mate with others, spreading the spores to its mate/sufferer. The males even fake of their hypersexualized state to be females to entice and infect different males, he mentioned.
The cousin to this fungus which infects annual cicadas out west additionally makes a psychoactive compound within the cicadas however it’s extra akin to psychedelics like magic mushrooms, Kasson mentioned. So typically individuals, even consultants, combine up the amphetamine that the contaminated 17- and 13-year cicadas produce with the extra trippy compounds of the annual bugs, he mentioned.
Both means, don’t strive it at dwelling. Despite the fact that cicadas themselves are edible, not a lot the contaminated ones.
Within the curiosity of science, Kasson tried one throughout this emergence, ensuring they had been from the within of a feminine so extra antiseptic.
“Man, it was so bitter,” Kasson mentioned, explaining that he instantly rinsed his mouth out. “It tasted like one thing you’d take into account toxic.”
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