{"id":7417,"date":"2018-01-23T05:09:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T12:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/?p=7417"},"modified":"2018-08-23T08:39:45","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T15:39:45","slug":"new-paper-massospora-cicadina-hijacks-the-sexual-signals-of-periodical-cicadas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/new-paper-massospora-cicadina-hijacks-the-sexual-signals-of-periodical-cicadas\/","title":{"rendered":"New paper: Massospora cicadina hijacks the sexual signals of periodical cicadas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new paper, <em>A specialized fungal parasite (Massospora cicadina) hijacks the sexual signals of periodical cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Magicicada)<\/em>, has been published by John R. Cooley, David C. Marshall &#038; Kathy B. R. Hill, in Scientific Reports 8, Article number: 1432 (2018).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41598-018-19813-0\">Read the paper online<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>In a nutshell: the fungus infects males and causes them to exactly mimic the mating behavior of female cicadas, thus infected males end up spreading the fungus to uninfected males.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abstract:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nMale periodical cicadas (Magicicada spp.) infected with conidiospore-producing (&#8220;Stage I&#8221;) infections of the entomopathogenic fungus Massospora cicadina exhibit precisely timed wing-flick signaling behavior normally seen only in sexually receptive female cicadas. Male wing-flicks attract copulation attempts from conspecific males in the chorus; close contact apparently spreads the infective conidiospores. In contrast, males with &#8220;Stage II&#8221; infections that produce resting spores that wait for the next cicada generation do not produce female-specific signals. We propose that these complex fungus-induced behavioral changes, which resemble apparently independently derived changes in other cicada-Massospora systems, represent a fungus &#8220;extended phenotype&#8221; that hijacks cicadas, turning them into vehicles for fungus transmission at the expense of the cicadas&#8217; own interests.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And now, because I need an image for the post: a meme:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/cicadas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/DSZJcGCWsAA8Hhl.jpg\" alt=\"Fungus Bae\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-7418\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/DSZJcGCWsAA8Hhl.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/DSZJcGCWsAA8Hhl-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Cicadas, when infected, are called &#8220;salt shakers of doom&#8221;. Add that to the meme &#8220;Salt Bae&#8221;, and the image makes sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new paper, A specialized fungal parasite (Massospora cicadina) hijacks the sexual signals of periodical cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadidae: Magicicada), has been published by John R. Cooley, David C. Marshall &#038; Kathy B. R. Hill, in Scientific Reports 8, Article number: 1432 (2018). Read the paper online. In a nutshell: the fungus infects males and causes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189,52,188,332,287,213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-david-marshall","category-john-cooley","category-kathy-hill","category-massospora","category-mating","category-papers-and-documents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cicadamania.com\/cicadas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}