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LISLE, Illinois (AP) — With their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough. But some of them really are sex-crazed zombies on speed, hijacked by a super-sized fungus. West Virginia University mycology professor Matt Kasson, his 9-year-old son Oliver, and graduate student Angie Macias are tracking the nasty fungus, called Massospora cicadina.

It is the only one on Earth that makes amphetamine — the drug called speed — in a critter when it takes over. And yes, the fungus takes control over the cicada, makes them hypersexual, looking to spread the parasite as a sexually transmitted disease. “They’re zombies, completely at the mercy of the fungus,” said University of Connecticut cicada researcher John Cooley.



This particular fungus has the largest known genome of any fungus. It has about 1.5 billion base pairs, about 30 times longer than many of the more common fungi we know, Kasson said.

And when these periodical cicadas live underground for 17 years (or 13 years in the U.S. South), the spores generally stay down there with them.

“This was a mycological oddity for a long time,” Kasson said. “It’s got the biggest genome. It produces wild compounds.

It keeps the host active — all these quirks to it.” Kasson decided to ask people from around the country to send in infected cicadas this year. And despite an injured leg, Kasson, his son and Macias travelled from West Virginia to the Morton Arboretum.

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