An award-winning photo captures a ‘zombie’ fungus erupting from a fly

Sometimes a photo is literally a matter of life, death — and zombies.This haunting image, winner of the 2022 BMC Ecology and Evolution photography competition, certainly fits that description. It captures the fruiting bodies of a parasitic fungus, emerging from the lifeless body of an infected fly in the Peruvian rainforest.

The fungus-infested fly was one of many images submitted to the contest from all over the world, aiming to showcase the beauty of the natural world and the challenges it faces. The journal revealed the winners August 18.

Roberto García-Roa, a conservation photographer and evolutionary biologist at the University of Valencia in Spain, took the winning photo while visiting the Tambopata National Reserve, a protected habitat in the Amazon.

The fungus erupting from the fly belongs to the genus Ophiocordyceps, a diverse collection of parasitic fungi known as “zombie fungi,” due to their ability to infect insects and control their minds (SN: 7/17/19).

上海千花后花园

“There is still much to unravel about the diversity of these fungi as it is likely that each insect species infected succumbs to its own, specialized fungus,” says Charissa de Bekker, an expert in parasitic fungi at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

First, spores of the fungus land on the ill-fated fly. So begins the manipulative endgame. The spores infiltrate the fly’s exoskeleton before infecting its body and eventually hijacking its mind. Once in control, the fungus uses its new powers of locomotion to relocate to a microclimate more suitable to its own growth — somewhere with the right temperature, light and moisture.

Fungus and fly then bide their time until the fly dies, becoming a food source for the fungus to consume. Fruiting bodies work their way out of the fly, filled with spores that are released into the air to continue the macabre cycle in a new, unsuspecting host. It is a “conquest shaped by thousands of years of evolution,” García-Roa said in a statement announcing the winners.

Research into the molecular aspects of fungal mind control is under way, De Bekker says, including in her own lab. “These fungi harbor all sorts of bioactive chemicals that we have yet to characterize and that could have novel medicinal and pest control applications.”

相关文章The new CDC guidelines may make back-to-school harderAcross the United States, kids are prepping for back-to-school, or are already in classrooms, and parents are buckling up for another pandemic school year. Like me, many are trying to get a handle on what COVID-19 precautions to take. Updated guidance released last week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn’t exactly […]

‘The Five-Million-Year Odyssey’ reveals how migration shaped humankindArchaeologist Peter Bellwood’s academic odyssey wended from England to teaching posts halfway around the world, first in New Zealand and then in Australia. For more than 50 years, he has studied how humans settled islands from Southeast Asia to Polynesia. So it’s fitting that his new book, a plain-English summary of what’s known and what’s […]

What is long COVID and who’s at risk? This NIH project may find outYou may have heard the big long COVID news that came out recently: A Scottish study reported that about half of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 have not fully recovered six to 18 months after infection. That result echoes what many doctors and patients have been saying for months. Long COVID is a serious problem and […]

Mountain lions pushed out by wildfires take more risksMountain lions have no interest in people, or the built-up areas we enjoy. But after a 2018 wildfire in California, local lions took more risks, crossing roads more often and moving around more in the daytime, scientists report October 20 in Current Biology. It’s another way the effects of human development could be putting pressure […]