Science

Mushroom-Hacking in the Ameisenhirn

It is a Vision of how the horror film: A parasite that embeds itself in the brain of its host and begins, its behavior control. So it makes the kind of fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. Their victims are ants.

The Pilzstengel grows out of the head of the dead Rossameise out.

Manipulation is considered a high art: Someone to impose its will on, without this it remembers, and him to believe he himself was the idea of this or that to do. For Ophiocordyceps unilateralis this is a light, it is a parasitic fungus of the genus Cordyceps. It attacks ants, and more precisely in the jungle of Thailand living Rossameise Camponotus leonardi. Then embed it as a Computer Trojan in your brain and turns you into a mindless puppet.

The ant is there to steer, where the mushroom goes well

The Rossameisenkolonien are on trees approximately 25 meters in height. From there, crawl the hardworking animals in search of food down to the Forest floor where the microscopic spores of the fungus.

Without knowing it take the insects to the spores. An enzyme that helps the fungus spread through the armour of the ant to eat. The fungal Hyphae, so the fadenartigen Zellgebilde of fungi that penetrate through to the brain of the ant. Once there, does the fungus control the behavior of the insect.

In the rainforest plays in the lives on many levels: Ants-nests are on 25 meters.

Farewell to home

After an incubation period of about two days, leaving the ant in their colony. This seems to have guessed that something with her is not true. With their feelers, she feels, with the front pair of legs, she tries in vain the occupiers to strip off. It moves into deeper waters, to a height of about 30 centimeters.

Here are the temperature and moisture conditions for the fungus perfectly. He puts the ant on a Plant, climb up and on to the underside of a leaf bogged down, so can the insect do not fall down. The ant has done its job and dies.

The cycle closes

The fungus is, however, not with the ant, ready: Now, it begins you from the inside eat. He digested the organs while the tanks as protection. Behind the head is growing gradually to the stalk from the body of the insect, on whose end is located a fruiting body. This makes fresh spores rain down to the ants on the ground, diligently food gathering. So the cycle begins anew.

What would happen if the ants to the commands of the mushrooms would disobey? Then the cycle will probably come to a standstill. A research team led by David P. Hughes of the state University in Pennsylvania has tried it: If you use the ants to die in a higher Position on the Forest floor, to have had the fungus no Chance of its life cycle to take place.

To-Die-for go the ants in low latitudes – close to the ground – where the mushrooms are comfortable with.

Hughes also explores the microbiological processes in the Ameisengehirnen. In Petri dishes, it has succeeded in this as long as alive, that he is the effect of the infection examine. Also the genetic of the fungus, the researchers have now decrypted.

Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is not the only parasite of any such Hacking methodology. But all known Hacking-types of fungi are always on the affection of a certain other life form, specialized. A fungus in the brains of people settles down and you fernsteuert has no one else discovered. Hopefully it’s not because that we all know remote controlled.