Massospora, a parasitic fungi, manipulates male cicadas into snapping their wings like women to infect unwary male cicadas.
Angie Macias/WVU.
Go Out your 2020 bingo card and examine the box for zombie pests. Just when you thought murder hornets were the worst thing to offer us nightmares this year, scientists have actually recently found a brand-new cicada population infected by a parasitic fungi that controls their minds and forces them to contaminate other insects.
A fungus called Massospora contaminates the cicadas and winds up managing the insects in an unusual way. The fungi has chemicals like the ones found in hallucinogenic mushrooms that can control the cicadas’ habits, according to a brand-new study written by scientists from West Virginia University, released by PLOS Pathogens.
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The method Massospora fungus spores attack cicadas seems like a horror movie. The spores gnaw at the cicada’s rear, abdomen, and even its genitals, where they transfer a lot more fungal spores for the cicada to transmit to other cicadas like a STD.
Then the cicadas body parts “deteriorate like an eraser on a pencil,” study co-author Brian Lovett said in a statement on July 27.
Here’s a closer take a look at the Massospora– cicada infection cycle.
Brian Lovett/PLoS Pathogens.
The brand-new study focuses on the unusual sexual behavior of the infected cicadas. While infected cicadas can no longer mate since their backsides are taken over by the fungi, t