Always on the lookout for viruses that infect odd creatures, I present Invertebrate Iridescent Virus 31, which turns pill bugs blue.  At various times I have maintained box cultures of these creatures hoping for a blue one to appear, but apparently its not highly prevalent, and probably only individuals that are heavily infected turn blue.

Despite years of (admittedly sporadic) effort, I did not take this picture

Historical detail: Rosalind Franklin herself published some work (link) on a Tipula Iridescent Virus that infects craneflies, being the first to characterize virion structure with visible light instead of x-rays.  This also appears to be the last paper published with her name on it, as she passed away a few months before it had been received by the journal.

Extra fancy:  IIV31 belongs to a family of viruses that mostly infect insects and reflects light of different hues depending on the size of the virus particle…. apparently my list of targets should include green mosquitoes (Aedes annulipes) in the Czech Republic (or Aedes detritus in France – France seems like a better bet), orange mosquitoes (Aedes caspius) in Khazakhstan and Ukraine or blue moths (Helicoverpa zea) in Mississippi.  Lucky Charms indeed! The paper (link) these colors comes from just lists them in a table and I haven’t dug into them.

Cool study – crowd sourced citizen science paper (link) using iNaturalist data to search for more IIV-infected insects was able to extend the host range of IIV* to 2 previously undescribed host pillbugs (PS – there are about 4,000 different species of pill bugs (a wiki fact: link) and extended the range to 12 new countries.

* They were only looking for indigo-colored pill bugs, not the virus directly.