Natural History Wanderings

Science Daily  reported

The fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis infects carpenter ants in tropical forests, hijacks their nervous system to compel them to climb to a precise height and humidity, locks their mandibles onto a leaf vein, then sprouts a stalk from the ant’s head to rain spores onto colony-mates passing below.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a fungus that creeps along the forest floors of Thailand, Brazil, and the Amazon basin, gets into a carpenter ant through a single spore that lands on its cuticle, drills inward with enzymes, and then spends the next two to three weeks doing something biologists still cannot fully explain: it takes the wheel. The ant keeps foraging, keeps grooming, keeps responding to nestmates. Then, on a schedule the fungus appears to dictate, it leaves the trail, climbs down from the canopy to a leaf roughly 25 centimeters above the ground on the north side of a sapling, bites into the central vein with a grip that will not release, and dies. A stalk grows out of the back of its head within days and begins raining spores onto the foraging trail directly below.

Read more at https://spacedaily.com/j-the-fungus-ophiocordyceps-unilateralis-infects-carpenter-ants-in-tropical-forests-hijacks-their-nervous-system-to-compel-them-to-climb-to-a-precise-height-and-humidity-locks-their-mandibles-onto-a-l/