Natures wonders: zombified flies (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 03, 2024, 20:59 (13 days ago) @ David Turell

A new study:

https://phys.org/news/2024-09-knowledge-fungus-flies-home-zombies.html

"Fly mold grows exclusively in flies. One subspecies of the fungus specializes in houseflies, while another uses fruit flies as hosts. The fruit fly-infecting subspecies was the one that the researchers sequenced the genome of in this study.

"'Research has shown that up to 60–80% of the flies that fly around in a given room or cattle barn can be infected with this fungus. Zombie flies are typically found when one comes across a dead fly sitting on a window surrounded by a white ring of spores," says De Fine Licht.

'Once the fungus has infected a fly, it eats the fly from the inside over the course of a week or so while the fly is alive. When nearly all of the fly's nutrients have been consumed, the fungus starts to manipulate the brain and begins to take over the fly's behavior. It causes the fly to stick to a plant or window, as high up as possible.

"'At this point, almost the entire body consists of fungal mass, and eventually all of the fly's normal processes stop. Over the course of a few hours, the fungus begins to shoot fungal spores out of the hind of the fly's body. In the process, it also secretes chemical fragrances that attract healthy flies. Once close, they try to mate with the dead flies, which allows the spores to grow into the healthy fly and repeat the process," explains the researcher.

***

"'The behavioral manipulation always begins at dusk. We think this is adaptive for the fungus because humidity is higher at night, so it's a better time to release infectious spores that are prone to drying out. We now know that the fungus has genes that code for light-sensitive proteins. We suspect that, just like in other organisms, the fungus could be using light cues to tell the time. Thus, we believe that this is an important clue in the mechanism underlying the timing of behavior manipulation," says last author Carolyn Elya of Harvard University."

Comment: Convergence at work. Relationships with fungus control have been shown here many times. The extreme complexity suggests design.