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Yes, 'zombie Cicadas' Infected By Parasitic Fungus Are Real

The telltale sign of infection in a cicada is when "the back half of their abdomen has been replaced with a yellow/white 'plug' of fungus," says Dr. Brian Lovett.

In 2024, two broods of periodical cicadas will emerge in Illinois and the surrounding states at once: the 13-year Brood XIX and 17-year Brood XIII.

When Brood X emerged along the east coast in 2021, people on social media shared videos of cicada heads climbing trees, with several likening the bodiless creatures to zombies. "Zombie cicadas" is also a popular Google search in the lead-up to this year's cicada season.

Are "zombie cicadas" real?

THE SOURCES

Brian Lovett, Ph.D., Division of Plant and Soil Sciences at West Virginia University

A study published in PLOS Pathogens, a peer-reviewed open-access medical journal

THE ANSWER

Yes, "zombie cicadas" are real.

WHAT WE FOUND

A team of researchers at West Virginia University in 2019 discovered that Massospora cicadina, a psychedelic fungus that specifically infects periodical cicadas, "contains chemicals similar to those found in hallucinogenic mushrooms." 

"The fungus causes cicadas to lose their limbs and eccentric behavior sets in: Males try to mate with everything they encounter, although the fungus has consumed their genitals and butts," according to the researchers, which is why they have often referred to the infected cicadas as "zombies" and "flying saltshakers of death." 

Once periodical cicadas, like Brood X, emerge from beneath the surface after 17 years, their primary goal is to mate. In a study published by the WVU researchers in 2020, they state that several days after emergence, healthy periodical adult male cicadas begin to sing in order to attract adult female cicadas. Meanwhile, "the Massospora–Magicicada parasite–host system functions, in part, as a sexually transmitted infection."

"Magicicada sexual behavior is highly stereotyped: males call and females respond with wing flicks, but healthy males never signal with wing flicks. When females remain unmated much beyond the onset of sexual receptivity, their responses become exaggerated with louder, more consistent wing flicks and sometimes even whole-body motions that appear to draw the attention of chorusing males," according to the study. 

"This exaggerated behavior is a form of hypersexuality that is consistent with age-related decreases in mate choosiness reported in cockroaches, medflies, parasitoid wasps, and other insects. In this context, hypersexuality observed in Massospora-infected cicadas is not surprising because infected cicadas remain unmated for their entire lives and may therefore exhibit increased sexual receptivity without any special manipulation by the fungus." 

Brian Lovett, Ph.D., a co-author of the study, further explained to VERIFY what makes the fungus-infected cicadas hypersexual. 

"This fungus keeps cicadas alive during infection, so it uses infected, but still living, cicadas as a vehicle for infecting others. One opportunity for infection is when an uninfected cicada attempts to mate with an infected cicada. This means that hypersexuality benefits the fungus because it would increase transmission," he said. 

While it's been verified that it's safe for humans and animals to eat healthy cicadas, Lovett says he and his colleagues do not recommend humans or animals to eat zombie cicadas. 

"While we believe it would be safe for someone to accidentally consume a zombie cicada, we do not recommend eating them. They produce a variety of chemicals to manipulate their cicada hosts, but they produce these at very small doses. These doses are sufficient to affect cicadas, but would likely not affect us," he said. 

When asked if eating a zombie cicada would affect consumers like magic mushrooms, Lovett noted that "massospora that infects periodical cicadas like Brood X produce cathinone, an amphetamine, not the 'magic mushroom chemical' psilocybin." He did, however, say that annual cicadas can become infected with Massospora species that produce the second chemical.

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Health Experts Worried About Valley Fever Increase In Fresno County

FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – Fresno County Public Health officials said their preliminary data shows an increase in Valley Fever cases last year- compared to 2022.

Now, health experts are reminding the community about prevention.

Farmworker advocates say outdoor workers are more than likely to get sick with Valley Fever since this disease lives in dirt and soil.

The Public Health Department agrees and says anyone can catch this fungal disease.

Manuel Cunha, the president of the Nisei Farmers League, says educating workers about Valley Fever is important.

"Valley fever is one spot," said Manuel Cunha. "It could be here 100 feet away. It's not even there right."

Cunha says the heat illness prevention event for ag workers later this month is one way to help protect them.

Another way is attaching prevention tips to their paycheck.

"A simple piece of paper folded, a big print in Spanish, and put it into their paycheck. So when they take a look at it, it's not a really heavy, simple language," said Cunha.

Fresno County Public Health says people are more likely to get sick with it around summertime because of the drier conditions.

"Sometimes the spores from the fungus can enter the air. And then, as someone breathes that fungus in those spores, it can enter the lungs," said Dr. Trinidad Solis with Fresno County Public Health. "And that's how someone gets infected with Valley Fever. "

Health officials say on rare occasions, Valley Fever can be deadly.

Generally, symptoms include shortness of breath, cough, fever, headache, night sweats, body aches and more.

It can be short or long-term.

"Some patients may require hospitalizations," said Dr. Solis. There are treatments available for the fungus that causes valley fever, but really it can last several weeks to months."

According to the public health department, preliminary data shows an increase in Valley Fever cases in Fresno County from 2020 to 2023.

In 2022, 448 Valley Fever cases were reported, and 624 cases in 2023.

This year, as of April 2024, 298 cases have been reported.

The Heat Illness Prevention event is scheduled for May 10,  at the Portuguese Hall in Fresno.

For more information, click here.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to YourCentralValley.ComKSEE24 and CBS47.

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A North Carolina Company Is Trying To Make A Fungus-proof Banana

Bananas are the world's most popular fruit. Americans eat nearly 27 pounds per person every year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A deadly fungus could destroy most of the world's crops, but a company in Research Triangle Park is trying to save the banana through gene editing.

When it comes to growing bananas, RTP may not be the first place that pops in your head. But Matt DiLeo has a greenhouse full of them.

DiLeo is Vice President of Research and Development at Elo Life Systems, a biotechnology firm that's exploring how gene editing can improve fruits and vegetables.

On a cloudy afternoon in early April, DiLeo opened the greenhouse door and stepped into a steamy atmosphere with a slightly floral odor. This greenhouse is packed floor to ceiling with banana trees. You've got to duck to keep the giant leaves from hitting your face. Some of the bananas are yellow, some are green, some are tiny and pink. DiLeo says they all share an important trait.

"Many of these are naturally resistant to the TR-4 fungus," DiLeo said.

TR-4, also known as Fusarium Oxysporum, is a kind of fungus that attacks banana trees at the roots, killing the fruit. Fungicides and other chemicals can't kill it, so farmers have few options when it invades their crop.

TR-4 was first discovered in Southeast Asia about 50 years ago. By the late 2010s, it was showing up in the soil of banana producing countries like Columbia and Costa Rica, which are home to the Cavendish banana — the variety you'll find at your local grocery store.

DiLeo and his colleagues at Elo think they've found the solution to making a TR-4-resistant Cavendish banana. It's called molecular farming — basically a form of gene editing.

Just upstairs from the greenhouse, DiLeo walks through a maze of laboratories, where dozens of scientists are hunched over workstations and microscopes. Their task is to understand how genes affect plant traits — like how the Cavendish banana is susceptible to the TR-4 fungus.

"One of the challenges about plants is that they grow very slow, it takes a long time to work with them. And so, we look for every opportunity we can to compress timelines, so that we can make better plans in the shortest time as possible," DiLeo said.

In this case, it's taking genes from those bananas in the greenhouse and editing them into the DNA of the Cavendish.

"Bananas contain 30,000 different genes," DiLeo said. "And each one of these genes helps a banana to do one thing that it needs to grow and survive in the environment. And what we do is we find those single genes that are broken, that make the banana susceptible to this disease, and we go in, and we fix that single gene."

There are more than a thousand banana species in the world, and many — like those we met in the greenhouse — are resistant to TR-4. But they don't produce enough fruit to feed the world's appetite.

In 2020, Elo entered a partnership with Dole, one of the world's largest fruit producers, to develop a banana that's resistant to TR-4 — and just happens to look and taste like the ones consumers are used to.

In another greenhouse, a few Cavendish banana plants are spread out in a room about the size of a bedroom closed.

"These are a mix of different gene edited plants that we've made, we expect some to be resistant, and some won't be resistant. And this is how we identify which ones can withstand the disease," DiLeo said.

Dole is ready to test Elo's bananas on farms in Honduras, but it will be a few years before they're ready for mass production. Elo isn't the only company wrestling with the TR-4 menace. Dole's main rival, Chiquita, is also working on a fungus-resistant banana. Another was recently approved for human consumption by regulators in Australia.

Even the United Nations is involved.

Its Food and Agriculture Organization hosted a World Banana Forum in Rome last month to come up with a global strategy to fight TR-4. It's not just a matter of satisfying the pallets of everyday consumers. For farmers in banana-producing nations, their very livelihoods are at stake.

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