A brood of “zombie cicadas” with a fungal disease that makes them hyper-sexual will descend on the East Coast as part of what will already be a rare “cicada-geddon” summer, CBS reported. These cicadas are infected with a sexually transmitted fungal pathogen that makes their genitals fall off and replaces their entire backside with a chalky white stub. Matthew Kasson, a professor of mycology and forest pathology at West Virginia University, told CBS that the infected cicadas can still go about their normal activities—which basically amount to flying around and mating with other cicadas—because the fungus causes production of a stamina-boosting amphetamine. However, Kasson explained, it also causes sexually frustrated cicadas to try to mate with twice as many partners as normal. “So, males for example, they’ll continue to try and mate with females—unsuccessfully, because again, their back end is a fungus. But they’ll also pretend to be females to get males to come to them. And that doubles the number of cicadas that an infected individual comes in contact with,” he said.
