This poor ant. It was taken over by a fungus that invades its body, grows in its tissues, orders it to climb up a tree and bite onto a twig, killing it. The fungus explodes out the back of its head, raining spores on ants below. Bad day. 📸 Kim Fleming
But importantly, the fungus forces the muscle to contract with such power that it ravages the fibers, apparently making them incapable of opening again. The hypothesis, Mangold says, is “that once the ant reaches a location and it bites down, at the time of the bite the fungus secretes something in a synchronous way that causes the forceful muscle contraction and then the death grip.” And voilà, the zombie ant becomes a vector for the fungal pathogen that continues to ravage the colony.
A zombie ant in its final death grip. The stalk erupting out of the back of its head rains fungal spores onto more ants below, thus perpetuating the parasite's infection of the colony., it also raises new questions. Mangold and her colleagues are particularly curious about what they call extracellular vesicle-like particles—little spheres attached to the fungal cells. “We really don't know what they are,” she says.
So as scientists unravel one mystery of the zombie ant, more mysteries pop up in its place. But as long as I never know what it’s like for a fungus to invade my muscle fibers, I’m good.
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