Endosymbiont

The Poem

I blame no one but myself
When my ribs show and my eyes dull in your absence,
Starved of your love.

I am not sorry for it.

Somehow, you disentangled yourself from
the filaments of genetic orthodoxy
And chose not to consume your loved ones in greed and arrogance
like your forefathers.

You feed, rather than feed on.

And in return I love you, like those before
Whom you tossed aside, empty husks of old lovers
who let themselves dissolve into nothing,
And I rejoiced.

I took you in and held you
so close you folded into flesh
refusing to let go

The Science

Based on the research of Ruby Siehl, Katherine Vyhnal, and Shana K. Goffredi, this poem expresses the symbiotic relationship between treehopper insects and fungi of the genus Ophiocordyceps as a love story. Treehoppers’ nutrient-deficient diet of tree saps necessitates a reliance on intracellular symbionts who recycle the insect’s waste products to provide vital vitamins and amino acids. In exchange, the intracellular symbionts, typically bacteria, live safely within the insect’s body.

In a fascinating twist, fungal species recently supplanted bacteria as endosymbiotic partners in several Treehopper species. These new symbionts are members of Ophiocordyceps, a genus well-known for their exploitative parasitic tendencies (e.g. the famous Zombie-ant fungus, made popular by the video game and television phenom The Last of Us). It is unclear how or why these fungi transitioned from parasitic to symbiotic, but Ophiocordyceps’ transition proves that current fungal pathogens could become future symbionts.