Now bring me a T. rex tapeworm! | The Loom
All right, then. The parasite overlords cannot be ignored.
The parasite in question is the fiendishly awesome Cordyceps, a fungus that forces its insect hosts to climb up high on plants, clamp down, and hold fast. The fungus then sprouts out of the ant’s body, showering down spores on hapless insects below. I wrote about Cordyceps in my book Parasite Rex, and followed up last year with a blog post on some great work by David Hughes of the University of Exeter and Harvard. Hughes and his colleagues wondered if the fungus was controlling its host in a fine-tuned adaptation, or if the ants were becoming zombies because they were just sick. After all, if your body was shot through with fungus threads, you’d probably feel lousy as well. But Hughes made a strong case that Cordyceps really is in charge, because it so consistently sends its hosts to the same kind of place in the canopy, finding a location that benefits the parasite. The parasitized insects even bite down on the same place on a leaf.