Cicada Symbiosis | SciShow Talk Show

[Music] Hey welcome to scishow talk show what's that day on scishow where we talk to interesting people about interesting stuff today we're talking to a cicada guy that you're actually a human being you're not a you not a cicada person but true you're both them both okay great this is John mcCutchan from the University of Montana associate professor of biology you teach people biology also learn about things that have never been known before about animals yes and bacteria and well right they're not animals no they're not but they're in right and and and you have been studying cicadas a lot and I just want to start out because honestly I don't I notice akkada it you know what it sounds like and I know that at least some of them do a thing where they like chill for seven years and them they're like I'm back that's all I know how does this akkada make its living it's crazy yeah so the longest is actually 17 17 years yeah so the lifespans are 2 to 17 years depending on the species ok but the famous ones the majesty Kate is or than the southeastern United States okay baby girl yeah so maybe you've heard them they come out in gigantic numbers yeah deafening so what they do is let's just start above-ground right so they come out you hear them they're singing they're making those noises they're they're calling they mate the female lays eggs in a branch in a tree mm-hm and the eggs hatch after a couple of months a few months and the nymphs follow the ground the little tiny babies fall to the ground and they dig until they find a root of the tree or bush or whatever and they suck on the SAP in the root it's actually the xylem sap so it's the SAP coming up from the ground into the tree right a second tree can't move slower than a cicada so they're the only thing yeah I mean that's all they do yeah they have piercing sucking mouthparts and they suck xylem sap from a root for 14 years 17 years this is not this is not what I thought I thought they liked they fed and then they were like you know what that was a lot yeah I'm gonna just chill for a while but this is actually this is how they grow it's how they it's actually kind of you more cool because they they yeah prepare yourself so they people have actually studied the long live the 17 years 13 years to Cadis and they grow for something like 8 to 10 years it's not it's not super coordinated all those guys on the ground they grow and they grow and they grow to my let's say it takes him 10 years to get to full size uh-huh then they stop growing and then they're just in a desert just waiting waiting for accounting 270 some of them does they they're counting to 17 is there a hatch every year no it's only a hatchery and these species it's 13 years and 17 years and that's it like there's no that there's a few spares but they don't they don't do they no yeah cuz there's nobody around they have babies with nobody whoa yes so they're just sitting there waiting and because like maybe some of them that takes it a little longer and you want like the maximum emergence well they get you know they're doing they're growing they're just sucking the SAP doing they're growing and the guy here and the girl here will take a little bit longer a little bit longer and one will take eight years won't take ten years yeah but they're both counting to seven but nobody takes 17 years they all do no no no but like nobody takes 17 years to grow no there's nobody's like not at maturity at 16 yeah probably not I mean there may be a few scratches but probably frost attack so they're just counting so the cicada genome on average is about twice the size of the human genome well that's not big norm why what are they just count all of it's all know it's not counting it's full of junk but there is a some sort of bit in there yeah they count with and so they're done counting 17 they emerge mm-hmm and these huge numbers they sing really loud they call they mate they everyone dies the female lays eggs everyone gotta start over again but you hear cicadas all every year it's just different species yeah it depends where you live around here in Montana we don't have very many species but you hear a few of them every year yeah but they're overlapping none of them take a year they all take at least two years or something like that so it's sucking on xylem sap is that good food terrible food oh so that I thought it sounds good to me like I'm just imagining this just so it's really dilute it's just basically yeah the phloem sap is syrup okay that's like raising a child on sprite you actually can't you could do it but the child will die well then you can't do yeah I mean true you got with era and a Flintstones vitamin you can support it it's soaked the vitamin right so that's the thing insects are animals and animals can't make half of the amino acids so the the building blocks right like it no animals can you me right we can't make half of these amino acids in our proteins right I thought it was like three no it'sit's it's nine or ten depending on this movements okay so cicadas can't make ten and it's not in their diet at least at very high amounts right it's just this water coming out from the ground so they can't make them on their own so this is why it takes so long cuz they're just base no this is where the bacteria come in well but there are you gonna ask me about the bacteria I've gotta get to it I know but like I like so there's some dramatic there's something in the xylem that they're eating it's well yeah there's a few no that's right it's really dilute right it's got some stuff you can't just be water okay that wouldn't work either it's really dilute so they have but they have to have some and there's some there's some non-essential amino acids there's some you know various depends on the tree species depends what time of day it's very very dilute okay it's it doesn't seem to be nutritious enough to grow an animal well it does take 17 years some of them only take two and they still use Island set okay yeah so keep going yes so animals can't get it in their diet or very much of it can't make it on their own so they have this really old relationship with bacteria for the most part sometimes it's a fungus mm-hmm sometimes the fungus has replaced the bacteria but it's usually bacteria in cicadas and there's two of them I wanted to there's only two like in this this critter right here well there's it's sometimes it's more complicated I don't know we have let's just call it okay yeah there's two one of them does doesn't matter what the name is but I'll tell you it's called socia it makes eight of the ten essential amino acid from what from non-essential amino acids so it's like other other simple mattias is the is the basic that the cicada like feeding the best series right and the bacteria build the essential amino acids and then somehow put them back into the cicada yeah the other the other symbiotic Tyrian called the hajj kenya it makes two essential amino acids so 8 plus 2 is 10 no no we did it and we did it and we're done and without that without that they die I mean people haven't cured cicadas of their symbiosis they've lived in an other related insects and they die yeah right they need them right of course I mean we all need our symbionts like we do i would also die with these these are these are special these are I mean these are more like you know what a mitochondrion is a mitochondria right.you mitochondria yeah it's more like that because the bacteria that's part of the organism sort of part of the cell almost not really but but they only live in special or sex cells so so when I you know when I get inoculated as a baby so baby human gets born it needs it needs bacteria inside of it to do all of the digestion and stuff you get inoculated through a bunch of different ways some during birth but also just being a human because right just you'll encounter bacteria but if you can't survive at all you're being hatched from an egg yep where are you gonna like are these things just like hanging out in the dirt mom but they're nowhere near there mom no but they're the male and the females mate mm-hmm and then the egg is fertilized uh-huh and I'm not exactly sure we're trying to study this we don't really know when well we kind of have some better sense of when this happens but in the each egg the mother takes a little packet of these two bacteria and sends the packet to each egg oh so every single egg it's a little tiny packet so what's in there it's in there yeah oh that way because if you did if he just happened to not get some you just yeah this is - this is that's why it's kind of like a mitochondrion which is also passed down from mothers mm-hmm but it's it's which is the mitochondria is also a bacterium well yeah it is weird are we gonna fight it can't live out well neither can these it can't those these bacteria can't they don't live inside of a cell they save an organ instead of a cell they're not a bacteria I will argue it's a bacteria live inside of cells but not only do that some yeah they're called strictly intracellular bacteria well that's I back down yeah I'm no longer I'm not gonna die on this hill yeah I mean you can argue with me about a lot of things yeah this is the one thing yes okay they only live in insects cells so wait if they are if they're in the cell then they are they in the egg cell like did they even have to pass this packet or is it just in there in the way that like I might have mitochondria are yeah it's a little bit different than that I mean they're not exactly the same mitochondria in every one of your cells yeah these are only in special cells are they just like the digestive systems they're kind of yeah they're they're in a special tissue actually these and all these insects Athens mealybugs if you garden sure yeah cicadas you see these things they all have special organs full of special cells which are stuffed full of bacteria you can go see a video of me talking about the aphids on my cherry tree with my microscope oh it's awesome see we shouldn't sue yeah I had so many predators on that thing yeah so good but there's also bacteria which I really they do the same thing well microscope could not handle that well could come to the lab yeah I don't want to talk about genomes because it's too complicated but that's a lot of what we do is study the genomes of these things but they have very few genes sort of like a medic your mitochondria and my mitochondrion has about 13 protein coding genes the genomes of some of these bacteria I don't know why I'm looking at it and pointing at it because it's you can't really see it they don't yeah maybe you can has about a hundred and thirty 140 genes which is not very many right all right so typical bacterium has 4000 right something like that and can you like the same way you can trace a lineage with a mitochondria can you do that yeah you can they're they're perfectly transmitted from mother to child so they perfectly basically from the beginning of the existence of cicadas and beyond hundred about a hundred million years these two actually one of them has been around longer huh but the littler one has been around for the entire existence of cicadas sometimes it's lost and replaced but it's been there for 100 million years or so it's a pretty long time yeah and before that they were finding other ways to eat food the bacteria know the cicadas yeah yeah the well the the whatever they were all these sat feeding insects yeah the ones that only eats SAP now used to be carnivores I used to eat other insects they tasted they some of them still do where they would like just put their little put their little mouth part on it something else insects yes yeah kill it but then the the vascular plants arose on the planet right and then silence happened flumes that became a food source that nobody was eating because it's terrible but these guys figured it out they started sucking they got the whole bacterial thing and that allowed him to do it why does it take some cicadas ten years to grow and some cicadas to years are they've different sizes are they best better or worse roots out there I don't think it's that I mean do I know the answer to this I don't think I know the answer to that's fine yeah that's that's very important tonight you know everyone knows all the things oh yeah no it's really hard to kind of hard to study yeah right you could imagine because they live underground mm-hmm you have to dig up trees and these little nymphs these little babies are so delicate you dig them up and they just kind of rip tear that's all over yeah experiments over you get yeah you have to have a lab tree you do people people do that yeah been there I actually have some friends at UC Davis and they've done this and I think they're doing it but they they don't want to dig it up because they would kill it you know so it's sort of a balance yeah hard hard to study guys it's a pretty little insect to our is that sort of like they're roughly the size of the cicada it's nothing mostly typical they get they get quite a bit bigger they get yeah I've seen some big bigger night you know they get some really small next day yeah but that's around here if you went out in the hills and you cared to collect them they'd be about that big and when they're adults they sort of stop eating yeah they might there's some ideas that some desert ones might still suck for air conditioning basically evaporative cooling they they don't really seem to eat that much you occasionally see them with their mouthparts implants but it's I don't think it's nutritive it that yeah it may be but they're only it's only it's the last small fraction of their life right yeah that mating period when they're asked that's the key that's what they're doing it's like month-long or what weeks to months that's a lot of sucking on our roots a lot of Reed sucking yeah few weeks of life I know for two weeks of daylight it's crazy yeah that's crazy well they make it work they do and they're some of them are successful yeah well I had no idea that there were intracellular bacteria at all not and anywhere well I knew that mitochondria works Yeah right and I of course know that like bacteria can be inside themselves you know it's a the field that I work in yeah if we've done nothing and we've done other things but if we've done nothing else we've sort of shown that that contingent in uum in bacteria and it's continuous from the mitochondria of the chloroplasts right these kinds of intracellular bacteria to the things you think of this bacteria right so it's a there's a gradient there's no there's no bright line mm-hmm saying that this is one thing that makes this one you know and this the other it doesn't exist right well we are gonna get joined today by I think some kind of arthropod but it might be a bit of a left turn from cicadas let's see what happens is this the first time you've shown this animal to anyone this is the second time the first time was at a kid's summer camp and you know they're so forgiving giving kids are so forgiving this I'm Mac I'm I'm actually quite nervous because this will be the first time I'm handle didn't want them get hurt I think yes okay no but it was nerve-wracking because like I'm very comfortable with many different animals and this is one animal that just you know brings up the heebie-jeebies just a little bit you get I keep it Jamie's antastic so soggy heebie-jeebies having this guy crawl around on me but no that would be okay yeah it's Arthur pretty much like a cockroach to me you don't get bothered by bugs this isn't a bug it's not your pod okay so my hands in the marina and odd arachnids all the time so I've used scorpions and spiders and for some reason those guys I mean scorpions get get a little bit weird with their legs but spiders are fine this are you ready okay the legs it's definitely the legs all right well let's look at the lady okay so this is Luna here and a bunch of wet dirt she's hiding right now Oh totally hiding there's nothing ready okay how do you wake up what uh-uh I see her you do yeah oh oh sorry I should I know you're making me even more nervous hey come on now oh oh what a pretty yes purple yes I'm gonna go ahead and bring her on out of here you live inside of a side of right wet right okay so Hank do you want to go ahead and put your hands up here too along the edge okay there you go is it are you gonna put this crab on me yeah this doesn't bother me at all awesome she goes bad sometimes okay I do not get this is this isn't creeping me out anywhere near as much as a spider okay so what what bothers me is the the feeling of the legs they're kind of like little stab you little legs you know there are like clingy legs like yeah two giant claws don't bother you that's the second thing so as they're running around of course they go sideways they move around really quickly and then if you startle them then they'll reach out and they'll they'll pinch you and it hurts it hurts significantly I guess I have experience with this you are the Florida studied crabs and I was in college and I've like I've drawn blood from crabs I mean not blood but you know that yeah and you do it in these joints that they have you can see that there's like this sort of puffy area between the shell and it's better like the elbows they were blue crabs okay kinda ya know or were they there ba they lived in they we would we would throw like chicken on a string into the lake and there and there'd be a crab on the baby not like we you don't need a hook it's just like no they were they were bringing okay okay yeah so this is a land crab and I'm new to this species and I love learning about them because they're I mean they're kind of well study but also not well studied at all I'm kind of like the cave is like getting the information on each species is difficult because they're like this is how crabs you know this is their life cycle but it's difference between the land crabs and the secrets and the freshmen like it they're all different and so you can't say this is how this happens and I was actually studying how they reproduce and the information out there is like the male's deposit their sperm into the female like but how that's the that's the story for all this basically some of them have like right go on the floors going for us and they like deposit like a spider would and then others like our fate they come up and they face each other and I'm like I want to know I want to know the details because that's very exciting are you trying to reason um I am NOT but we actually have a second guy here going but oh so Luna is a female I've been pinched by crabs enough times that it's not super scary anymore yeah they don't I've never never drawn blood no it's just an uncomfortable feeling yeah yeah and like once once it happens enough then you're like alright I'm more afraid of Paris are you so would you like to hold him or do you get that I can't say no can I you can't no yeah that's right let's see all right four cameras on me right yes this is the male she's pretty - she is my goodness it's just not even white his color phone you want to come over here he's gonna move sideways so he's gonna so I'll move in that way like me come on Dean he's he's like right both our hands are kind of like shaking a little bit good he's reaching out good job there you go Oh fighting stance people fall off okay good job hey what did you go yeah grab top and these guys um sorry I mean they're not super fragile they are a burden chitin so they have this really awesome real good exoskeleton they're not a station so they're gonna see on the outside there you go yeah no they're not they don't have like a huge huge mass yeah so yeah so this this little stabby feeling that they do just like so weird oh pretty cool do they climb trees time they do [Applause] so yeah they climb trees so these guys they hang out in the dry like not in the ocean and so that's why we call them land crabs and you know they're like 30 feet up where they're not in like full-on water but it has to be moist so these guys they have gills that are covered by their shell here their exoskeleton buddy I was a little pinch so then it's covered in stuff blood vessels so they can absorb oxygen so they can breathe on land but they have to stay close to the ocean because that is part of their life cycle they eggs in the ocean and then they hatch there and they go through about five molds before they climb back up becoming sure to come back onto land definitely trekking yes I've got the buddy but look at the difference in color so this is this is the male yeah littler and younger okay so he's not worried about falling off at all he's like it I will always be caught he has learned yeah um so they're very slow-growing they live about 15 years and so she's just older and where did these come from these guys live in Costa Rica and so um they live you know from Mexico all the way down to Panama along the the coast there and they're still studying them they there's at least one subspecies that they've you know really labeled and who knows things will change next ten years will probably all be all all different but look at him he's like using this clause like nope take a whole I want to go back yeah yeah I want I want to be not stared at he doesn't sit back I know I didn't know this what do you call what do you call the crab movement crab walking okay well there's a thing that the children do called crab walking well you your belly is facing upward and you put your hands and legs and you can do that that is what crab okay okay getting occasional twitches here but mostly they're very relaxed and I eat I don't eat anything they can find they like fruit they like seeds they like different kinds of flowers and other plants and she's also very good at holding on so even if she goes like to the side of your arm she'll probably like going on to your arm okay good job yeah she goes to your bit all right now look at young guys so they will eat mostly plants but if they come across like a baby mouse or something like that they'll eat that too they're not super picky but it's pretty cool seeing the meat because they'll like reach up and grab a little fruit and then like you know eat it oh good good catch good catch you don't have to worry that's your home but that's awesome she's showing off like they would be climbing on trees and then they can see and they'd be like okay I'm dropping down there and I'm screaming along so they they are very I don't know if agile is the right word but she has truckin they can they can maneuver really well and just they have eight legs so they're good at figuring out how to get over rough terrain it's strange to imagine bugs this big like insects have a hard time getting that big like their ex that big but they're very rare much much bigger we can get much bigger because you know it's easier to get oxygen out of water and also you don't have to worry about your mass because yeah yeah yeah but it's you know when you got but you can also be a Lambs land crab I mean land crabs don't get a speck exactly yeah I love how they've adapted their gills to be able to get oxygen air super cool they're getting more and more popular in the pet trade and so I don't know oh thank you I can't get out now I didn't like that so these are becoming more popular pets they are and so they're being taken out for me hey these guys are like I mean there are some videos on YouTube that you can see I've handled them a couple times and I've never grabbed them so like a lot of people are like oh the way to handle a crab is to grab their you know from behind and thanks and then drop you but oh they can and so then they'll think of you as like something that's trying to eat them what I've always done is like you've stopped like I reach underneath them and I'm like I am a thing for you to crawl on and as they as they get more used to me these guys can actually get very used to handling if you treat them properly but there are there is whole little information on how to take care of these guys properly which is what I'm really excited to teach people is like well these guys are really neat they can live longer than six months because that's what's happening is right people buy these as pets like hermit crabs and they'll live six months to be like whoops let's buy some more I guess I have a six-month life span right would you like to try and hold loop it over here sure looping looping and Luna it's a nice man oh you're so little and cute well Lupin is a pleasure to have you on the show I see why they call you that cuz your claws look like flowers one of the common names is a moon crab okay I see Lupin no no oh good job I love it I love you you're beautiful thanks sorry it's not funny making like totally comfortable with this like cockroaches he was like new can't deal with that well again I'm from Florida where cockroaches are up in your business and you don't want them to be where as we used to chase and catch crabs on the beach well Lupin Luna thank you so much for visiting us here at scishow talk show jesse has a YouTube channel called animal wonders because you also have a wildlife place called animal wonders how we rescue a lot of different kinds of animals and and thank you for doing that and also if you want to check out our youtube channel at youtube.com slash animal wonders Montana and John mcCutchan from the University thank you for teaching me about weird bacteria and cicadas it was my pleasure thanks for having me bye-bye [Music]

Channel: SciShow

Views: 91,032

Rating: 4.9331326 out of 5

Keywords: SciShow, science, Hank, Green, education, learn, John McCutcheon, Talk Show, cicada, luna, lupin, moon crab, crab

Id: V9VhtWolwpQ

Length: 27min 11sec (1631 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Jwolfe152]

Thought someone might find this interesting, maybe not though.

[u/scrockstar]

I enjoyed it. Have a feeling that the new album will be both loud and thematically about life and death.