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Decapitator flies lie their larvae inside the ant’s chest. Then the ant has only a few weeks to live before eating from the inside out. S | Credit: Armi Fauzi / 500px via Getty Images
Zombies are among us. And these small non -violated beings are everywhere. In this excerpt from “Rise of zombie bugs“ (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025), Author Mindy Weisberger examines many Grizzly End for workers who receive zombies from the beheaded fly Pseudoacaco ViMani.
Scientists first described the terrible habits of ants decapitators in the genus Phorid Pseudoacuters More than 90 years ago, from observations of ants in Europe, South America and the United States. A female fly begins with the betting of an ant to a worker – carefully holds its distance at the beginning, as it is no longer than the head of its goal.
To scientists who watch Foridi in the field, “they appear as a minute, blurred spots as they move over ants -hosts”, “” Lloyd MorrisonEcologist of the National Park Service, writes in a guide to parasitoids of insects in North America.
Females do not have much time to be selective for their hosts, as adult flies live only about a week or less in nature. When the female fly sees an opening, it is inserted and laid an egg inside the chest of the ant – one and done – for less than a second (analysis of the female reproductive system in Phorid Fly Pseudoacon Vasmani She revealed that the eggs are in the form of a torpedo and measure 130 micrometers long or about 0.005 inches).
Single Pseudoacuters The female can produce from 200 to nearly 300 eggs, and in one hour it can make more than 100 parasite attempts (although it lays only one egg per host).
Recently parasitized workers “often look stunned after an egg -strike strike,” the US Department of Agriculture Ministry of Agriculture Ministry Sanford Porter He writes an entomologist in Florida, and the ants “often press their feet for a few seconds to a minute before they run away.”
These attempts to lay eggs fail everyone; In fact, most of them overflow. In laboratory experiments when Pseudoacuters The females tried to implant an egg in an unwanted ant, they failed at least 65% of the time. But when an egg manages to get inside an ant, his host enters the kingdom of walking dead. After the egg hatched, the ant had only a few weeks of life before succumbing to the manipulation of its attacker, stumbling from home and family and then suffering from the inside out.
Forida Fly (left), Pseudacton Culllatus, About 1 mm long and red imported fiery ant (right), Solenopsis Invicta, About 3 mm long. The fly can lay eggs inside the ant head. Then it flies the larvae that hatch, will slowly behead the ant. | Credit: Sanford Porter
Within days of hatching, the Forid Larva migrates from the chest in the ant’s head; It is little known about how the parasitoid avoids being destroyed by the Ant immune system, but one possibility is that the movement quickly in the host’s head can help the larva avoid an immune response. For the duration of the second larva installer – about two to three weeks – is made comfortably in the cavity of the head of darkness, sipping on hemolymph.
This liquid meal is everything you need to the larva until it reaches its third installer. For an infected ant during these initial weeks of the honeymoon, despite wearing and nourishing a growing parasite inside your head, life is quite business as usual; The ant looks and behaves normally, according to scientists at the State University of Louisiana State University (LSU).
By “intensive observation” of parasitism of ants from the formed fly Pseudacton TricuspisLSU researchers have found that a parasitized ant remains with its friends from the nest for about 8 to 10 hours before the larva in its head is ready to crack. It will then leave the nest of what looked like a normal feed expedition, along with its unsaid sisters. But for the zombie ant, this last trip was a one -way trip.
The recently hatched fly of a decapitator burst out of the head of a fiery ant, which she parasitizes and kills. | CREDIT: USDA-Earth Research Service
After the ant turned her back on the colony and left, she was at the death of death. And the parasite was in the driver’s seat. “The parasitized ants were very mobile after leaving the nest and eventually entering the layer of the soil on the soil surface,” scientists said. “The term” zombie “fiery ants is created to characterize behavior while under parasitoid control.”
Finally, the Forid Larva is ready for its metamorphosis. It releases an enzyme that breaks down the membranes in the exoskeleton of the wandering ant, causing the ant to stop walking and eventually collapse. The ant head is loosened by the body as well as the first pair of legs; Other legs can also be affected. His mandibulas weaken, which makes him unable to bite or get crammed. As for the larva, it indulges in a new appetite for solid food; Namely the tissue of ants. You can probably guess where this is directed; The carved, larvae -filled head, falls (the ant, surprisingly, is already dead, although his legs are still shaking as his head rolls).
However, the parasitoid is just good. It ends the last of the delicious bits inside the beheaded an ant head and pushes the mandibles from the road – the ant no longer uses them, after all – and then the larva curves in a position so that its first three segments of the pupils are stuffed in the gap where they used by the ant.
These segments harden and darken, turning into a healthy, protective plate, which is approximately the same color as the exoskeleton of darkness, and two hair breathable “horns” extend from the cocoa on both sides of the mouth of the ant. Other parasitoid insects maintain their host of zombies alive until the metamorphosis of the larva is over, but the Foridi limp non -grooves inside the embarrassed heads of their dead hosts.
However, the exoskeleton of an ant head is extremely firm – more difficult than other parts of his body – and therefore gives additional protection to Puping’s larva, Brown says. Two to six weeks later, depending on the temperature of the air and the size of the species, the adult Phorid Fly is ready to pop out of the separated head of the ant, like the goddess Athens from the legend penetrating, fully grown by her father Zeus.
This newborn alone is much less than the ancient Greek deity and has more legs than most. A few hours after the onset, the adult Phorid Fly is ready to mate-to continue its reproductive cycle of head separation.
Detached from Zombie bugs rise: The surprising science of parasitic-control of the mind by Mindi Weisberger. Copyright 2025. Posted with Johns Hopkins University Press permission
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