ANDRZEJ KRAUZEIn the spring of 2013, something strange was happening to Shelley Adamo’s cricket colony at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The insects appeared perfectly healthy, but they were dying at a younger age than usual, and the females weren’t laying eggs. “Usually you can tell when they get sick—they stop eating and look lethargic,” says Adamo. “But these animals were fine almost until the day they died.” In fact, she would later learn that the males were better than fine, taking less time to initiate courtship with a female.
“There’s a general sort of philosophy in the literature that animals that are infected with diseases, particularly viruses, have certain behaviors or display certain characteristics which make them less-desirable mates,” says University of Massachusetts Amherst insect virologist John Burand. But these crickets didn’t seem to be following the rules.
To figure out what was going on, Adamo plucked a female from the colony, chilled it, and dissected it. Suddenly the answer was clear. “She was grossly abnormal inside,” Adamo recalls. “Her ovaries were all shriveled up; [she had] no eggs.” In place of the ovaries was an engorged fat body, an essential organ that plays roles in metabolism, nutrient storage, and protein synthesis. “In a gross kind of way, it was lovely,” Adamo says. “The ...
