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Your waivers Regina Barber here And this

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for our regular roundup of Science News.

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The Legend Sasha Fighter. I

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have A and a cohosts that we've

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had on for many of these news

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hey Gina Things? Yeah, So as you

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will know, we're going to share three

0:43

science stories in the news that have

0:45

caught our attention recently. Yup, we're starting

0:47

with invasive draw spiders making their way

0:49

across the east coast and I saw

0:51

in some prep notes that there's. One

0:53

about a fungus turning cicadas

0:56

into sex obsessed zombies. And

0:59

then we close it all out with

1:01

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1:03

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P R F Today. Or

2:25

a saucer as our guest. Which topic should

2:27

we start with? Well, a lot of people

2:29

are badly freaked out by spiders. Solicits rip

2:32

the band aid off and start with Alan.

2:34

Yes, oh I'm in. Tell everyone the yeah,

2:36

let's not worry about the zero spiders. They're

2:38

not dangerous. They do have these like really

2:41

big webs. The females do have inch long

2:43

bodies and the legs make them up to

2:45

almost four inches long. Well, okay, and they're

2:48

black in their electric yellow and their venomous.

2:50

No reason why people don't like Slater. Zola

2:52

does not having so much to not let.

2:54

Me: Give this a try. So draw spiders

2:57

rarely bait and even if they did, their

2:59

fangs are super small. they'd have a really

3:01

hard time even getting through your skin. and

3:03

if they did by you, it easily treated

3:06

just like a normal bug By and even

3:08

less painful than a bee sting. Again, spiders

3:10

not so bad, right? Likely. So how did

3:12

these spiders? cashier? So the most likely got

3:15

here through shipping containers from East Asia and

3:17

now they have this big population in and

3:19

Lantern and it's a big port of entry

3:21

so that makes sense. And it's also like

3:23

has a similar humidity. And temperature to their

3:26

natural habitat in Asia. And the spiders

3:28

can die as it gets too cold. So

3:30

with climate change warming our planet researchers think

3:32

that warmer winters are going to help shore

3:34

as establish populations in more places further north.

3:36

You mentioned that these spiders are in basis

3:38

and obviously oftentimes invasive species can be very

3:40

bad for ecosystems. Do we know if this

3:42

is gonna be bad for the East Coast

3:44

in any way. We. Actually, don't know

3:47

yet. Don't you see more research on

3:49

how Dros fighters are secular? environment and

3:51

other native species but one of the

3:53

researchers i talked to said that spiders

3:55

are prime example of to trends that

3:57

are helping a lot of other invasive

3:59

species spread and that's global shipping routes

4:01

expanding and a warmer climate. And Sasha,

4:03

we can all help researchers by tracking

4:05

Joros. So if you see one, you

4:07

can log it on community sites like

4:09

iNaturalist, Project Joro, or Jorowatch.

4:11

Mmm, they have their own websites, wow. Yep.

4:14

Okay, so your next story keeps

4:16

us on the critter beat. It's

4:18

about a fungus that is turning

4:20

cicadas into what you described as

4:22

sexed up zombies? Yes, yes. So

4:25

you've probably heard about this huge cicada phenomenon

4:27

happening this year, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so

4:30

yeah, so there's these two groups of periodical

4:32

cicadas and they're emerging at the same time.

4:35

One comes out every 17 years in the

4:37

Midwest and the other emerges every 13 years

4:39

in the Midwest and the Southeast. And where

4:41

does the zombification come in? Okay,

4:43

yeah. So our colleague Rachel Treisman recently

4:46

reported on this. It's the fungal parasite

4:48

Mesospora cicadina, which has been observed in

4:50

these cicadas in about half a dozen

4:53

states now. It fills an

4:55

infected cicada's abdomen and then emerges

4:57

out of its back end like

4:59

this chalky white gumdrop. Or at

5:01

least that's how Matt Cassin

5:03

described it. He's a fungi scientist. I

5:06

have never liked gumdrops. Now I definitely

5:08

never will eat gumdrops. Absolutely not. It's

5:10

a horrible visual. Okay, so Matt

5:12

told NPR that this fungus is

5:15

unique because it keeps the cicada alive even

5:17

after a third of its body has been

5:19

replaced by this fungal tissue. And

5:21

it's not just alive. It makes the

5:23

cicadas hypersexual in an attempt to spread

5:25

its spores. Ah, so is it kind

5:27

of like the fungus hijacking the cicadas

5:29

for their own gain and then

5:32

the zombified cicadas spread the fungus

5:34

even farther? Yeah, that's exactly

5:36

it. So infected male cicadas will try

5:38

to mate with healthy females and then

5:40

also other males. And they're really just

5:43

flying around and raining down spores like

5:45

flying salt shakers of death. That's

5:47

how Matt put it. It's always good at phrases. I know.

5:50

It's really good language. And if that weren't

5:52

enough, Matt says this fungus produces a stimulant

5:55

that likely means all of these cicadas

5:57

are high out of their minds while

5:59

this is all going. going down. Is

6:01

it known how widespread this fungus is

6:03

in the cicadas? So Matt says the

6:05

incidence of infection is pretty low, maybe

6:07

below 5%, although he's encountered

6:10

some areas where it's as high as

6:12

20 to 30%. And if you

6:14

happen to come across one yourself, don't worry,

6:17

this fungus is specialized to cicadas, according to

6:19

scientists at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

6:21

So safe to handle, but you might want

6:23

to wash your hands after that. A good

6:25

rule for life in general. Yes.

6:28

Last topic totally different. This

6:30

one's really interesting. I saw an article

6:32

about this just today, understanding how spaceflight

6:34

affects human health. Yeah, okay.

6:36

So as we know, humans have evolved

6:39

to thrive here on Earth, which means

6:41

spaceflight and microgravity are, to

6:43

put it simply, rough on the body. We've

6:46

known that astronauts lose bone density in

6:48

space, blood and bodily fluids are redistributed

6:50

in microgravity, which really just means that

6:52

without the effects of Earth's gravity, these

6:55

things are all pushed upwards from the

6:57

legs and abdomen to the heart and

6:59

the head. But we haven't

7:01

known much about what's happening inside human cells

7:03

during spaceflight. And as spaceflight becomes more common

7:05

and astronauts set out on longer missions, this

7:07

other piece of the puzzle is crucial. And

7:09

are these new findings getting at that about

7:12

what happens at the cellular level in space?

7:14

Yeah, so that's the goal, because right now

7:16

we don't know that much, but a huge

7:19

collection of papers released this week in Nature

7:21

and its companion journals is starting to fill

7:23

in some gaps about what's going on inside

7:25

cells. I talked to one

7:27

researcher, Elia Overby, who told me about

7:29

this one finding, telomeres or markers of

7:31

aging at the ends of chromosomes seem

7:33

to get longer during spaceflight, as opposed

7:35

to generally getting shorter like they do

7:37

here on Earth. And if telomeres

7:40

get longer, do we know if that's a

7:42

bad thing? Okay, yeah. So Elia said

7:44

we don't really know the implications of this

7:46

yet, which is kind of the whole problem.

7:48

But she does hope that a new database,

7:50

the Space Omix and Medical Atlas is going

7:53

to help answer this question. It's the largest

7:55

of its kind to date and includes data

7:57

from a bunch of different space missions. Yeah,

7:59

astronauts. astronauts gave samples of things like blood,

8:01

saliva, and even skin biopsies before space flight,

8:04

and then researchers compared those samples to ones

8:06

taken after they returned to Earth. Is

8:08

the idea that now that we have more

8:10

data, we'll be able to take better care

8:13

of astronauts? Yeah, both Elia

8:15

and a space physician I talked

8:17

to, Emmanuel Urquieta, talked about personalized

8:19

medicine. And Elia said the

8:21

SOMA database helps us get closer to

8:23

that kind of care for individual astronauts

8:25

and for civilians who are interested in

8:27

things like commercial space travel. Instead

8:29

of it being a shot in

8:32

the dark, a completely exploratory exercise in figuring

8:34

out what's going on in the human body,

8:37

they now have something to

8:39

point them towards for novel scientific questions that

8:41

they didn't have before. Right now they only

8:43

have data for a small number of people,

8:45

but Emmanuel and Elia both say data like

8:48

this will help usher us into a new

8:50

era of space exploration. So interesting the toll

8:52

on the body that space travel can take,

8:54

what interesting research this is. Yeah,

8:56

I don't ever want to go to space. Sasha,

9:00

thank you so much for laughing with us today.

9:02

You're welcome. Yeah, come hang out with us anytime.

9:04

I love doing this with both of you, so thanks very much.

9:09

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9:28

was edited by Viet Le and Rebecca Ramirez.

9:31

Rachel and I checked the facts and the

9:33

audio engineers were Josh Newell and Neil Thibault.

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