Parasitic mushrooms turn insects into attractive zombies

A plot worthy of a horror movie: American scientists have found in Arkansas a new type of parasite fungi that kill insects and control them for some time after death, forcing females to attract males. For the latter, this does not end with anything good.

Flowers before death

Goldenrod soft beetles lead a quite normal way of life for beetles: they fly in the meadows, eating certain types of flowers. However, it is in the flowers that they are awaited by mortal danger in the form of the fungus Eryniopsis lampyridarum. Beetles infected with the fungus dig deep into the stem and die.

But the most terrible thing begins after: after 15-20 hours, a dead beetle spreads its wings, and its abdomen swells due to a fungus that has settled inside. If such a metamorphosis occurs with a female softbody, an unsuspecting male from the outside may seem to be ready for breeding (spread wings for soft bodies are a sign of attractiveness). In the process of mating, the fungus also infects the unlucky groom.

Photo: Donald C. Steinkraus et al.

For the first time, scientists found soft-bodied beetles of soft beetles in 1996. Then, out of 446 dead individuals found, one out of five died due to Eryniopsis lampyridarum.

Now scientists want to check how the decrease in the attractiveness of “dead brides” will affect the likelihood of infection - they will try to fix their wings.

Body Thieves

The case of Eryniopsis lampyridarum is unique in its own way: usually parasitic fungi control the death behavior of the victim, rather than “revive” the already dead. The most famous example is the tropical one-sided fungus cordyceps. When he infects a woodcutter ant, he leaves the colony, crawls onto a tree and jaws grabs hold of the leaf, and then dies. Then the insidious mushroom grows through his whole body and releases a long fruit tree, which is often used in oriental medicine, from his head.

Portal N + 1 also recalled other cases when parasitic fungi subjugated their hosts. For example, in Japan, the larvae of one species of riders live on orbiting spiders. Shameless tenants not only gradually eat spiders alive in the literal sense of the word, but also force them to weave cocoons for themselves.

And in Korea, researchers found that fungal pathogens of chytridiomycosis behave almost as cunningly as Eryniopsis lampyridarum. When they infect tree frogs, males begin to make a mating call more intensively. Thus, they attract a larger number of females, which is why the infection spreads even more actively.