Some ophiocordyceps species that feed on ants are currently known as “fungi-zombie fungi” because the fungal parasite can manipulate the behavior of their hosts for their own benefit
A 99 million-year-old amber ball preserved an old fly in a horror show: with the body of a zombie fungus, similar to a mushroom, leaving his head.
The insect, along with a second specimen of a young ant infected with a similar fungus, are two of the oldest examples of a bizarre natural phenomenon that involves fungal parasites that seize the bodies of their hosts before they kill them.
“Amber gives us this opportunity to visualize the old fossil-preserved ecological relationships,” says Yuhui Zhuang, a doctoral student at the Yunnan University Paleontology Institute in southwest China.
“In general, these two fossils are very rare, at least among the tens of thousands of amber specimens we have seen, and only some preserved the symbiotic relationship between fungi and insects,” adds Yuhui Zhuang, the main author of a study on fossils published on June 11 in the magazine
Zhuang and his colleagues named two previously unknown types of old fungi of the Ophiocordyceps genre from their amber investigation, which involved the use of optical microscopes to study the tiny pieces of amber and microcomputed tomography to make 3D images of fungi -infected insects. The first, called paleoophiocordyceps gerontoformicae, was found in the ant. The second, Paleoophiocordyceps Ironomyiae, in the fly.
Some species of Ophiocordyceps that feed on ant species are currently known as “fungi-zombie fungi” because the fungal parasite can manipulate the behavior of their hosts for their own benefit. The phenomenon inspired the video game that is originally from the HBO television series “The Last of Us”. HBO shares a parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, with CNN.
“The discovery of these two fossils suggests that terrestrial ecosystems were already very complex and that Ophiocordyceps, in particular, may have started acting as an ‘predator’ of the Cretaceous period, regulating the populations of certain groups,” Yuhui Zhuang assumes in a written response sent to CN.
An ant infected with a parasite fungus trapped in an amber with 99 million years (Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences/Nigpas)
The zombies fungi of then and the now
Nowadays, parasitic fungi, also known as entomopathogenic fungi, infect a wide variety of insect groups, including ants, flies, spiders, cicadas and scarab, according to the London Natural History Museum.
In the case of carpent ant ants, the Ophiocordyceps fungus spore lands on an ant head, enters your brain through an insect exoskeletal area and assumes ant control to facilitate its propagation, explains Conrad Labandeira, scientist and curator of fossil arthropods at the Smithsonian Natural History museum in Washington, DC, DC, DC, DC, DC, DC, DC, DC, DC, DC, DC He was not involved in the study of Zhuang.
Paleoophiocordyceps probably turned its hosts into zombies in a similar way, theorizes Conrad Labandeira.
“It seems that ants, for some reason, have been the target of early zombification, and are currently the main receivers of this parasitoid fungus,” says Labandeira, adding that flies are rarely affected by these parasitic fungi today, which makes a particularly interesting fossilized example.
The species of fungus that infected the prehistoric ant can be an ancestor of the zombie ant fungi and therefore probably controlled the body of its host in a similar way, suggests the co-author of the study João Araújo, curator of mycology and assistant teacher at the Museum of Natural History of Denmark. Very few copies of old parasitic fungi have been discovered, so little is known about their evolution.
The two insects were probably killed by the fungi before they were trapped in the sticky tree resin that ends up forming the amber, proposes João Araújo, noting that most of the entomopathogenic fungi kills their hosts to produce the fruit body.
This lost diversity of parasites played a significant role in the formation of the planet in which we currently live, says Phil Barden, associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology Institute of Technology, who worked with amber fossils.
“Even though we find a remarkable diversity of bullied organisms in the amber, it is important to remember that we only observe the smallest glimpse. For any ant or fossil scarab, we can imagine all the parasites, fungi and bacteria that these insects support,” adds Phil Barden, who was not involved in the new study either.
A spider that was killed by an entomopathogenic fungus (Anton Sorokin/Alamy Stock Photo)
With this discovery, says study coauthor Edmund Jarzembowski, a associate professor and researcher at the London Natural History Museum, was “fascinating to see that some of the strangeness of the natural world we see today was also present at the height of the era of dinosaurs.”
The fossil is the latest to emerge from Myanmar’s rich amber fields.
Although Amber fossils have been some of the most interesting discoveries of paleontology in recent years, ethical concerns have emerged, however, about the origin of the amber of the region devastated by the civil war.
Yuhui Zhuang said the fossils came from Myanmar’s amber markets. The study states that the specimens were acquired before 2017 and, as much as it is aware of the authors, were not involved in armed conflicts or ethnic conflicts.
