Humans aren’t the only ones susceptible to the psychedelic chemicals found in magic mushrooms. The “zombie cicadas”, under the influence of a parasitic fungus, have resurfaced in West Virginia to infect their friends, and now scientists have a better understanding of how it happens.
Researchers from the University of West Virginia recently saw the return of these strange creatures, which are infected with a fungus called Massospora. According to a study published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, the fungus manipulates insects to unknowingly infect other cicadas, quickly spreading the disease to create a kind of zombie army.
When a male cicada becomes infected with Massospora, the researchers discovered that it flaps its wings like a female, a known mating call. This behavior attracts healthy male cicadas, facilitating the spread of the fungus, which contains chemicals like psilocybin, found in hallucinogenic mushrooms.
The way the disease manipulates its host and spreads is only the latest discovery after decades of research on Massospora. The results show the parasite’s functions, in part, as a sexually transmitted infection.
WVU Photo / Angie Macias
“Essentially, cicadas are attracting others to become infected because their healthy counterparts are interested in mating,” co-author Brian Lovett, a postdoctoral researcher at the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, said in a press release. week. “Bioactive compounds can manipulate the insect to stay awake and continue to transmit the pathogen longer.”
The team investigated the infected cicadas that returned to southeastern West Virginia earlier this year. Although periodic cicadas only come out every 13 or 17 years, time is staggered in different places, making it easier for researchers to study their behaviors.
Investigators described the gruesome details of the mushroom process as a “disturbing display of the proportions of horror movies B”. The spores eat away at the cicadas’ genitals, butts, and abdomen until they eventually fall out, replacing them with fungal spores, a brutal process for insects that only spent more than a decade underground.
Cicadas begin to decompose, but instead of dying immediately, they fly around and infect others. Due to the mind control abilities of the infection, the bugs seem to behave as if nothing is wrong.
Lovett described the process as “disappearing like an eraser in a pencil.” Fungi are similar to rabies, both “recruiting live insects to do their will,” the researchers said, in a process called active host transmission, which is a form of “biological puppet.”
“Since we are also animals like insects, we like to think that we have full control over our decisions and take our free will for granted,” Lovett said. “But when these pathogens infect cicadas, it is very clear that the pathogen is pulling on the cicada’s behavior levers to get it to do things that are not in the grasshopper’s interest but in the pathogen’s interest.”
University of West Virginia
Lovett and his co-author Matthew Kasson, an associate professor of plant pathology and mycology, first discovered psychoactive compounds in Massospora-infected cicadas last year. But until now, it was unclear how the infection occurs.
The researchers are not sure when they encounter the fungi in their life cycle. It is possible that cicada nymphs may encounter Massospora before emerging from the ground after 17 years to move into adults, or on their way underground, before feeding on roots for 17 years.
“The fungus could wait more or less within its host for the next 17 years until something wakes it up, perhaps a hormonal signal, where it possibly remains dormant and asymptomatic in its cicada host,” Kasson said.
But, there is no need to worry about being infected by zombies. different to murder hornets or mosquitoesAccording to the researchers, these zombie cicadas are generally harmless to humans.
“They are very docile,” Lovett said. “You can walk up to one, pick it up to see if it has the fungus (a white to yellowish cap on its back end) and put it back. They’re not a major pest by any means. They’re just a really interesting quirky bug that has developed a style strange life. ”
Due to its relatively slow reproduction rate, the fungus does not present a significant threat to the cicada population in general. But scientists are still waiting to discover how the pathogen developed and how it may be evolving to further terrorize other insect species.
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