Science Vs - Brood X: A Drug-fueled Cicada Orgy

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Parts of the U.S. are about to see a surge of cicadas — masses of flying bugs, popping up all over the place. After 17 years underground, a crap ton of Brood X cicadas will emerge for a giant chorusing orgy — and it’s all for sex and drugs. So what does this cicada storm mean for us? Should we be bugging out? We speak to biologist Dr. John Cooley, ecologist Dr. Louie Yang, mycologist Dr. Matt Kasson, and evolutionary biologist Prof. Chris Simon.  Check out the transcript right here: http://bit.ly/3cnpD95 You can help scientists map out the 2021 Brood X emergence by snapping photos of the cicadas with your smartphone! – To join in, check out the Cicada Safari app at www.cicadasafari.org  To learn more and see if Brood X is going to pop up in your area, check out: https://cicadas.uconn.edu/brood_10/ This episode was produced by Michelle Dang with help from me, Wendy Zukerman, as well as, Nick DelRose, Taylor White, Meryl Horn, and Rose Rimler. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Haley Shaw, Peter Leonard, Marcus Bagala, Emma Munger, and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to all the researchers we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr. DeAnna Beasley, Prof. Donald Steinkraus, and Prof. Marten Edwards. And to all folks we spoke to about their cicada experiences: Martin, Carrie Engel, Maureen Hoffmann, Ryan Hampel — and thanks to Brad Bolton for the cicada recording. And special thanks to Emmanuel Dzotsi, the Zukerman family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. This is the show that pits facts against a flood of flying insects. In just a few months, an army of bugs is heading for millions of us. And this army hasn't hit us for 17 years. For those who have seen it though, they'll never forget it. Like Ryan. He was 14 and living in Cincinnati. And one spring day, he saw the first signs of the cicadas.

Their shells. I go outside and on the step, I see maybe five cicada shells. The next day, I see 20 20 and then the next day like 100 and you're like, what is going on here? Before the week was done, he starts seeing all these cicadas. Basically giant cockroaches with skeletal wings and big beady red eyes. They're flying around his face and getting caught in his hair. There are just so many of them that it just seems so awful.

And they just kept coming. So many bugs. And coming. You look out the window, you see them all flying around. Just thousands and thousands of little points just constantly moving and fluttering and flying and humming. It's absolutely apocalyptic. We talked to a bunch of people who remember this army of

cicadas over the years, like Maureen, who was in Indiana. It was everywhere. They were everywhere. It's hard to imagine just how many there were. You couldn't drive with your windows down because there were just so many that you would end up with cicadas in your car. And Carrie saw the bugs over in Maryland. And I won't forget the day, but we were playing softball and our bus driver had parked the bus with all the windows down. And we went back and there were just cicadas everywhere inside that bus. I would think thousands. I mean, they were just all around the windows. They were on the seats. It was so gross. There were stories of trees packed with so many cicadas that it looked like the trees were breathing and how the roads stained with bug

juice were just covered in dead cicadas. And then there's that deafening sound. The noise kind of comes in waves. So, you know, it's a low level of loud and then it kind of builds and builds and builds. And then it suddenly like crescendos for 15 or 20 seconds. It's just like deafening noise. They were just so loud. You know, you could hear them everywhere. Now, if you live in the US, masses of cicadas called broods show up every now and then. But what's coming in the next couple of months is expected to be huge. Billions of

cicadas covering cities and towns across parts of the US. It's called Brood X. But on paper, it's an X because of Roman numerals. So it looks like brood X, which is infinitely cooler. But the point is, these buggies are going to hit almost a third of US states, from down in Georgia as far north as New York and Michigan. And if it's anything like last time, it's going to be all cicadas all the time. You know, and everyone was talking about it. There is a pizza place here that did a cicada pizza. Did you happen to try one or no?

Oh God, no. Absolutely not. I am not a fan of such things. Although if you dipped it in chocolate, I might try it. We just got out of the horror show that is 2020. And now this? On today's show, what exactly is about to happen and how mad is this all gonna get i think having gone through covid and all that kind of stuff people are like oh come on one more thing and once we started swarming into this wild world of cicadas we realized that this is all gonna

be pretty bloody mind-blowing what's gonna happen is a drug-fuelled orgy complete with sexy music, crazy competition, and to finish us off, billions of dead carcasses. When it comes to cicada storms, there's a lot of... It's just absolutely apocalyptic. But then there's science. Science versus Brood X. Brood 10 is coming up just after the break.

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Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. Welcome back. So there's a horde of cicadas showing up in a couple of months. And with all that's going on right now, we just wanted to know exactly what on earth is about to happen. And for this, we're going to need a cicada biologist.

And look who's just flown by. So my name is John Cooley, and Bird 10 is really something I've been looking forward to. John, who's at the University of Connecticut, told us that the University of Connecticut, told us that the story of this cicada storm started almost two decades ago. Back in 2004, as Snoop was dropping it like it's hot, little baby cicadas were dropping deep into the ground. And while in the soil for 17 years, these little cream-colored nymphs shaped like tiny beans have been growing and growing, getting fat by slurping up nutrients from tree roots. And they're just sitting there plugged into a root, feeding away.

And for 17 years, they're growing. Yeah, feeding and growing, just slowly. And so this is going on all the time. They're underground and nobody notices them. That is until sometime in spring or early summer, it's often around May, the soil warms up just right and the cicadas start crawling up towards the surface.

And then they wait for the perfect evening. The evening has to be humid, but not stormy. And it's going to wait till dusk and then it's going to go. And then boom, they're out. How many cicadas are going to be coming out in Brood 10? More than you can imagine. It's going to be a mind-blowingly big number of cicadas. You can't possibly ignore this. And so what are they all coming out for? Well, they have to find a mate and reproduce. So this is going to be like a big mass orgy?

Basically, it's males have to find females. That's the whole point. So picture this. You're a male cicada and your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to nail a female. But you're up against thousands of other dudes and you'll self-destruct in less than six weeks. Yeah, you're going to die. Most cicadas die within six weeks. And the clock is ticking. And so they're racing against the clock to find a mate. So the males get into these mad rushes, these mad competitions. They'll do anything, shove each other, take over somebody else's courtship. Anything goes because it's a mad scramble. But the big thing they're going to do is sing for their cicada coochie. And they make that song using these organs that look a bit like crinkle cut potato chips. And by putting tension on that

organ and then letting it go, it creates this loud sound that gets amplified through their hollow abdomen. And what's super cool is that this massive throng that you'll hear, it isn't just one kind of cicada singing, but it's three different songs from three different cicada species, all blended together. And John was just the guy to give us a demo. So species number one, meet Decim. He's a little bit country. Something along the lines of this. Number two, the Casanai, with a bit more pep in his step. And finally, the Decula species. and finally the decular species who is really pulling out all the stops and the ladies love this stuff but john says they have a mission too. Don't get somebody who belongs to the wrong species.

To make sure they hit the right guy, they'll listen for the right call. And then... Respond by flicking their wings. They do not have sound-producing organs like the males do. But they can flick their wings, and it's a little pop. Just like that. And if she does that, it's game over. He'll never go away because he heard a wing flick. From here, the two of them do a little back, just like that. And if she does that, it's game over. He'll never go away because

he heard a wing flick. From here, the two of them do a little back and forth, kind of like picking up a date at the bar. The guy will be like, so are you single? You want to have kids? You want to get it on right here? And voila, the beautiful world of making cicada babies begins. And sometimes the actual sex part goes on for quite a while. So once it starts, it doesn't stop until the male releases. And I think the record that we recorded was 96 hours. Whoa! But the bottom line is, that notorious noise is this jumble of calls and wing flicks from three different species.

And after all this rumpy-pumpy, now Cicada will go lay her eggs. And it's a lot of eggs, up to 600. So for the cicadas and entomologists out there, this is about to be one exciting, exhilarating adventure. But should we be bugging out about this? Like, could all these insects cause some serious damage? Just last year, locust plagues ripped across parts of Africa, chewing up crops and wreaking havoc.

Is this about to happen here? Well, even though in the US sometimes cicadas are called locusts, they're actually not locusts. Locusts can munch up entire fields of wheat. Cicadas, they can't. And it's not because they don't have mouths. They do have mouths. Oh yeah. Charming, charming mouths. This is Louis Yang. He's an associate professor at UC Davis. And Louis told us that this charming cicada mouth is basically a big straw. Cicadas use it to slurp up those nutrients from the tree roots. And they can't use this straw to munch up our leafy greens. They couldn't even if they wanted. They don't have the right

mouth parts. You know, they have these sucking mouth parts that are appropriate for sucking on roots. But this doesn't mean cicadas are totally benign here. One of the main troublesome things that they do happens when a cicada lays her eggs. Because to do this, she uses this fancy egg-laying device that she's got, and she'll use it to slice a little incision into a tree branch. And then lay their eggs in those little incisions that they create. Cool. So it's like slicing a little bit of the tree and then just shoving your eggs in? Yeah, exactly. It's kind of remarkable to see. It's impressive that they can saw through wood. The problem is that if enough cicadas do this to a tree,

its branches can fall off. Those branches that just get really hammered, egg nests upon egg nests, and they're just sort of perforating the branch and eventually, you know, a wind comes through or something happens and the branches just kind of break. Oh, my God, it really is like the lullaby, like when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall and down will come baby cicada. Yeah, that's true. I've never thought of it.

But Louis says this is really only a problem for young baby trees. Most of the time, especially with big trees, they're going to be just fine. So while all these cicadas might be a bit gross, the billions of bugs aren't expected to cause too much trouble. And so the mum is going to leave her eggs safe and sound in the tree. And she'll cock it soon after. But this adventure has only just begun for her little tackers. And several weeks later... So after everything is quiet, you know, like the chorusing is over, all the hubbub is down, like people think the whole thing is kind of over.

That's when the eggs hatch, in the dog days of summer. The little babies will fall out of the tree and burrow underground, and they'll stay there, growing and growing and growing for another 17 years, until we see them again in 2038. So once we all have our jetpacks and robots have taken over our jobs, we'll have lots of time to gaze at this massive cicada love fest once more. But this story that we've told you of love in the time of cicadas, that's just a fairy tale. Because for some of these cicadas,

they're actually about to walk into a nightmare, something truly horrendous. You might have heard of flesh-eating bacteria, but lurking in the soil, ready to attack these unsuspecting cicadas, is a cicada butt-munching fungus. You heard me. And it's coming up after the break. Welcome back. welcome back we've told you that in just a few months billions of cicadas who have been waiting for 17 years underground will finally emerge and they sure are gonna be horny

now we're gonna tell you about something that could get in the way of their baby-making bonanza. And yeah, it's literally a butt-munching fungus. How many times a year do you use the pun, like, I'm a fungi? You know, as a dad of three young boys, I tell a good deal of dad jokes, and I think my kids just get sick of it. So I've definitely worn that one out. Hmm. I guess he doesn't have mushroom in his life for puns anymore. Well, anyway, this fun guy is Matt Casson.

He's an associate professor at West Virginia University, and he studies plants and fungi. And the fungus we're talking about is called mesospora. And here's what it's doing. It's hiding in the soil and waiting for the cicadas to come crawling through the ground. And when one comes through, this fungus is ready to attack. It's going to make its home inside the cicada's abdomen.

And then as it grows, it'll basically chew off bits of their butt. That's right. And then eventually their butt falls off, right? Their butt and genitalia fall off. Sometimes the genitalia doesn't fall off right away. Like, the fungus can eat partway through a cicada's backside. And then, say, she'll go in for some nookie with a fella. After they go their separate ways and they separate,

he'll break off her genitalia and fly away with them. Have you seen this in action? I have. The idea that, like, you know, you came in for a mating attempt, but you're left with the full backside of your partner is unbelievable to think about. So what you end up with is a bunch of cicadas flying about who have lost a third of their body to this fungus. And you can actually see what's going on here. Basically, it looks like they've got a big white blob where their butt should be. The back end, if you were to imagine a chunky eraser on a, you know, an elementary school

pencil, you know, a big kind of white, you know, nubby eraser, that's kind of how the fungus looks emerging out the backside. And so what's in it for the fungus? Why make the butt be gone? Well, for the cicadas who have lost their butt, as they fly around, little fungal spores drop off and get spread all over the ground, turning the cicada into what Matt and his colleagues call the flying salt shakers of death. Oh my gosh. To kind of describe this phenomenon where spores rain down like salt coming out of a tilted salt shaker onto unsuspecting cicadas below. So this butt muncher spreads and spreads. And the fungus has one more trick up its sleeve. It can actually change the behavior of the cicadas, making them hornier.

So they spread this fungus around kind of like an STD. And seeing all this made him really want to know, what exactly is the fungus doing here to keep this cicada all horny while its butt has fallen off? Let's talk about losing a third of your body. You know, if you had your leg amputated or had a sore puncture in your abdomen, you'd probably be pretty lethargic. You'd probably want to sit down. You'd probably not feel very great.

I definitely wouldn't be in the mood for sex. That's right. But despite all that, these cicadas continue to walk down the street and whistle as if, you know, they just won the lottery and, you know, they're having the best day of their life. So what's going on there? To find out, Matt asked a fellow nerd to analyze the chemicals inside the chunky fungal bits. And one day, they're sitting in Matt's office combing through the data together. And he said, wait a minute. He said, I think I got something. And he, you know,

pulled something out of the list. And he said, have you heard of cathinone? I said, no, I've never heard of cathinone. Cathinin. It's an amphetamine. When people take this stuff, it can do things like amp us up and make us hornier. And studies have found that sometimes when insects get exposed to amphetamines, it can kind of do the same thing to them. Like flies on amphetamines get less sleep. And with cockroaches, sometimes their heart starts pounding and they get super excited on this stuff.

And the fact that the fungus has amphetamine in it is a huge clue as to what's happening here. And I thought that explains so much. But so does this mean that if I ate a bunch of infected cicadas, I could get high? You know, it's possible if you ate enough cicadas. How many would I have to eat to get high? A couple dozen. But I would not, for one, you know, go after an infected cicada and eat it. And that's not just because it's a little gross. Matt says if you toss these drugged up cicadas on the barbie, you might regret it. Because on top of the amphetamines, his team has found more than a thousand other chemicals in the fungus. And some of them could be toxic. Okay,

the final thing we are tackling here is a big cicada mystery that even to this day scientists are trying to work out. So to understand this mystery, you got to know that the reason these cicadas come up in these huge groups is basically for safety. It's safety in numbers. And that's because these cicadas that are about to pop up, they're basically defenceless against predators like birds. Like, they're pretty easy to see and some of them don't fly away very quickly. Which means that scientists like Chris Simon, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut,

well, she can easily scoop them up. I mean, I can run as fast as the cicadas fly. Oh, wow. So instead of evolving fancy tricks like speed flying, these cicadas just come out in huge numbers. And with so many friggin' flying insect burgers around, hey, even if some are gobbled up, tons of them are going to make it out alive. Predators eventually just get tired of eating them because there's so many cicadas and eating so much of it. And so the cicadas that are left survive. So this is why it helps to sync up and all come out in one massive go.

But for scientists like Chris, this brings up a super curious question. How do billions of dum-dum cicada babies know how to come out on time? Like, how did they coordinate their group's 17th birthday bash? Well, what scientists like Chris arevelling is that this probably has to do with what the little buggies are doing underground for 17 years. Remember, they're slurping up nutrients from tree roots. While the cicadas are feasting away, the trees are living their lives, going through the cycles, flowering, losing their leaves and whatnot. And so the cicadas must notice that because they're feeding, you know, they've got their beaks tapped into the roots. Oh. So that they know what's going on with the tree

and so they know that a year's gone by. So, for example, in spring, when trees are flowering, their sap changes a little, which means that the meal that the cicadas get from the tree is probably changing too. It's really interesting that the cicadas are keeping track of the changes in the trees. Is that surprising to you that cicadas can keep track for 17 years?

It does seem like a long time, like for a lot to keep in their little heads. Well, see, they're not keeping it in their heads. There's some kind of mechanism that's ticking off these years. The thinking here is that cicadas aren't ripping pages off their inspirational quotes calendar, but rather that cicadas are getting these chemical signals, say each time the tree changes up their meal, and this triggers little internal tickers

that ultimately count up to the 17th year, telling them, it's time, come out now. And what's pretty remarkable here is that sometimes cicada babies are actually ready before they're 17 years. But even then, these tachas won't just pop out willy-nilly. It's too dangerous. Instead, they seem to be emerging precisely four years earlier. Yes, they're counting in fours. And then if they're still not ready, then they might wait four years and come out after 21 years.

Wow. Chris says that if they didn't do this counting by fours thing, then one might pop up all on its lonesome and it'd be toast. But since all your mates are counting by fours, you'll always have plenty of friends by your side. And for all you math nerds out there who are thinking, but wait, 17 isn't divisible by four. Apparently, the first year doesn't really count here. So to get to 17, the cicadas are doing some kind of one plus four plus four plus four plus four thing. All right, so even if some of them end up chilling

for another four years underground, scientists are sure that we're about to see a gigantic group of cicadas, billions of them, maybe even trillions of them. And they'll have their bonking blitz, and then really quickly, all of them are going to die. But recently, Dr. Louis Yang figured out this lovely thing that's going to happen with all these corpses. He did this study where he planted a bunch of baby sycamore trees and then littered them with dead cicada carcasses.

And after a few years, he saw that the trees were bigger. That's so cool. I thought so. In their third year, the trees were on average about 5% taller and their trunks were 10% wider than the trees without the dead cicadas. And that's because all those dead cicadas were packed with nitrogen and they became a natural fertilizer for the trees. They take from the forest, but they give back to the forest. Then they die and it goes back into the soil. I think it's really cool to think about. It's so cool.

I mean, it really is the circle of life and all that stuff. And so for listeners out there who are about to see this, like, mass of insects coming out of the ground, should they be worried? No. Worried about what? I would say that if you are lucky enough to be in a place where the cicadas are going to be coming out this summer,

you should sit back and just enjoy the spectacle. They're coming out of the ground for the first time. It's kind of amazing when you think about it. It might be loud. You might have dead cicadas in your yard. But it's just such a cool spectacle of nature to see. And yeah, I would sit back and enjoy it as much as you can. And yeah, maybe even grab yourself a nice slice of pizza

with some very crunchy toppings. That's science versus. And just before we do our citations, if you want to hear more about cicadas, you've got to check out our friend Ali Ward's podcast. It's called Ologies. She just added an episode on cicada ology. And on Ali's podcast, she sits down with heaps of different kinds of experts.

And she just always has this really fun way of finding answers to questions that you didn't even know you had. And she has episodes on so much good stuff. Like, have you heard of fulminology? This is the science of lightning. Or about nasology. It's all about taxidermy. There's one on nephology, which is the study of clouds. One on filamentology, which is the study of kissing.

Yes, there's a word for that. So you should definitely check it out. It's called ologies. Bring, bring. Hello? Great. We nailed it on our Zoom. So Michelle Dang, producer at Science Versus, how many citations in this week's episode? All right. There are 116 citations in this episode. 116 cicada-filled citations. Yes, so much cicada science. And if people want to find this cicada science, where should they go?

They should head over to our transcript, which is over in the show notes. So that's if people want to learn about the real nerd science of cicadas. But if people are living in areas where Brood 10 is going to launch, they can actually help science along. Yeah, there's this really cool citizen science app called Cicada Safari. And basically the scientists are asking people to download this app and help them take photos of cicadas as they pop up in their area. So what people can do is, you know, download Cicada Safari. If they spot a cicada,

take a photo of it and upload it to this giant database. It's going to help them map where the cicadas pop out. Oh, that's so cool. I'm totally going to download that because they might come to New York. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually really excited to see them. I kind of think they're cute now too. I know. I know. I feel a bit bad that we called them giant cockroaches with their little bug eyes. Thanks, Wendy. Bye. Bye. This episode was produced by Michelle Dang with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, as well as Nick Delrose, Taylor White, Meryl Horne, and Rose Rimler. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Hayley Shaw, Peter Leonard,

Marcus Begala, Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to all the researchers that we got in touch with for this episode, including Dr Deanna Beasley, Professor Donald Steinkraus and Professor Martin Edwards. And to all the folks we spoke to about their cicada experiences, Martin, Kerry Engel, Maureen Hoffman, Ryan Hample, and thanks to Brad Bolton for the cicada recording. A special thanks to Emmanuel Joshi, the Zuckerman family,

and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.