Trillions of Brood XIX 13- and Brood XIII 17-year periodical cicadas from two broods will emerge from the ground in 16 U.S. states, likely starting in mid-May. A dual emergence like this hasn’t happened since Thomas Jefferson was president. (Shutterstock),
ACROSS AMERICA — The trillions of periodical cicadas emerging later this spring in 16 states could include some of what experts are calling “zombie cicadas” infected with a fungus that causes them to frantically mate even after their genitals fall off.
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Periodical cicadas live most of their lives underground before a synchronized emergence every 13 or 17 years. Brood XIII, known as the Northern Illinois Brood, has a 17-year-life cycle, and Brood XIX, the Great Southern Brood of 13-year cicadas.
This year’s crop of periodical cicadas is expected to be larger and noisier than usual this year with the dual emergence, which last occurred in 1803. Cicadas are expected to start coming out of the ground in mid-May.
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Life is precarious enough for the bugs with copperheads and other predators without the risk of infection by the fungal pathogen Massosphor cicadina, which is laced with the same chemical found in psychedelic mushrooms and street amphetamines.
And as these psychoactive compounds do to humans, the fungus — which lies dormant in the soil until the cicadas push through it in their emergence — causes some bizarre cicada behavior. Both broods are susceptible to the infection, which is detected within a week or 10 days of emergence, Matthew Kasson, an associate professor of mycology and forest pathology at West Virginia University, told CBS News.
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Infected cicadas go through a lot before their genitals fall off. The fungus overtakes their little bodies and eats through their limbs. Their abdomens fall off as the fungus grows like a sponge inside them.
Yet they persist, spreading the equivalent of an insect sexually transmitted disease.
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“The cicada continues to participate in normal activities like it would if it was healthy,” Kasson said. “Like it tries to mate, it flies around, it walks on plants. Yet a third of its body has been replaced by fungus. That’s really kind of bizarre.”
The fungus recognizes a hormonal signal from the cicadas.
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The males come out of the ground in full voice, vibrating their tymbals — drum-like membranes on their abdomens — to create a buzzing sound that, with enough numbers, can be as loud as a jackhammer. In a signal that they’re ready to mate, the females flick their wings.
The hyper-sexualized behavior is scientifically interesting to Kasson.
“So, males for example, they’ll continue to try and mate with females — unsuccessfully, because again, their back end is a fungus,” he told CBS. “But they’ll also pretend to be females to get males to come to them. And that doubles the number of cicadas that an infected individual comes in contact with.”
Kasson and his team began studying zombie cicadas in 2016, or as one of his students at the time called them “flying salt shakers of death.”
Even with missing body parts, important ones given the job of cicadas during their brief time in the sunlight, “they would be whistling as they walk down the street,” Kasson told the American Society of Microbiology, according to an article in Smithsonian in 2021.
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Can a person get high by eating a cicada infected by the fungus?
“Maybe,” Kasson said in a University of West Virginia news release in 2021, “if you’re motivated enough.
- Read more: Cicadas Are Edible: Recipes
“Here is the thing,” he continued, “the psychoactive compounds were just two of less than 1,000 compounds found in these cicadas. Yes, they are notable, but other compounds might be harmful to humans. I wouldn’t take that risk.”
The states that will see periodical cicadas this year are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Virginia.
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