Alison Parshall: you are listening science, quickI’m Alison Parshall.
[CLIP: Show theme music]
[CLIP: Ambient sound from New York Botanical Garden visit, rain and faint voices of tourists]
partial: It’s a rainy early spring afternoon and I’m at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Everyone else is here to see Ran. But I’m here to see a nasty, insect-zombifying fungus. I am meeting João Araujo, a mycologist who works in the gardens here.
Araujo: oh there’s a box [rustling].
Partial (tape): Cool, cool. [laughs] Oh, I’ve only seen them in pictures. Oh, there are so many things that come out of it.
Araujo: Yes, the fruiting body.
Partial (tape): which leg?
Araujo: That’s right, legs. And this is the fruiting body seen from the back of the head.
Partial (tape): Are those little yellow spots eyes?
Araujo: yeah, eyes, yeah
Partial (tape): hey you
Araujo: yes.
Partial (tape): It seems like a sad fate.
Araujo: yes.
Partial (tape): I think it’s the circle of life.
partial: João is the forerunner of a genus of fungi called ophiocordyceps, An insect killer pinned to the board in front of me in his office.
Most of them are ants — these poor people poor Ali.
[CLIP: Whimsical piano music]
They were doing their ant thing one day when they came across a tiny spore that quickly took over their entire body. I climbed.
Huge, fuzzy, spore-covered columns called fruiting bodies then pop out of the ant carcass.
Partial (tape): Funny thing is, my eyes can’t see all the horrific details, so it’s easier to look at them in person than to look at pictures of their giant displays.
partial: Zombie ants have been especially famous since the TV show Last of Us It aired on HBO for the first time this year. In the show and the game it’s based on, a so-called zombie ant fungus made the fateful leap from ants to humans, causing a global epidemic.
[CLIP: Excerpt from The Last of Us: Cordyceps, Aspergillus, any one of them could become capable of burrowing into our brains and taking control not of millions of us, but billions of us.]
Every mycologist I’ve spoken to says this jump isn’t possible without some elaborate sci-fi logic. However, it is also true that it is not well known. ophiocordycepsOf the hundreds of species discovered under its umbrella, 35 manipulate prey behavior. But João estimates that as many as 600 manipulators could be discovered.
Araujo: Many of these specimens that we collect are ultimately new species. Because there is very little research on this subject and we know very little about them.
partial: That’s João’s mission. To catalog this vast undiscovered diversity. You can call him an extreme fungal forager. His travels have taken him around the world, including Colombia, Ghana, and the Amazon.
Most recently, he visited the Atlantic Forest on the Brazilian coast, an even more endangered rainforest than the Amazon. 92% of his Atlantic Forest has been destroyed. Hidden among his remaining 8% of trees is an undocumented living treasure.
Araujo: And I was walking while looking for fallen leaves, trunks, logs, etc. And I found a purple fruiting body coming out. I quickly realized that it was truly unique.Like the purple fungus that infects the trapdoor spider. purpuraBut I had my suspicions that this could be new.
partial: So he found what he believed to be a new species. purple eyes ophiocordyceps‘Sister genus. The seed does not yet have a name. João and his colleagues are currently working on proving its uniqueness. One of his colleagues, Alison Perrigot, director of the Lund University Botanical Gardens, videotaped the moment of discovery.
[CLIP: Short video of Araújo and Perrigo finding the fungus, insects droning in the background.]
Perrigo: go.
Araujo: shall we?
Perrigo: Yeah, be careful… (I can’t tell the difference) Okay”
Partial (tape): that’s so cool. Just poke it with a stick?
Araujo: Yeah, because it turns out there are a lot of spores.
partial: And if you follow this purplish, velvety 5cm pole to the ground…
Araujo: This spider lives in a burrow. It’s called a trapdoor spider, so it literally exits the trapdoor. The fungus managed to either throw the spores or put the spores into this burrow to infect the spider. And after the host is killed, these fruiting bodies emerge, grow from the spider’s body, and grow out of the trapdoor.
partial: As far as Joan knows, new purpura Species do not manipulate the behavior of infected spiders. As such, João wouldn’t call them zombie his spiders, but the public might be inclined to make that comparison.
But manipulators or not, the group of these fungi is huge. João’s journey has spawned many unknown species. ophiocordyceps Related fungi, including manipulators and non-manipulators. Many dried victims of these seeds lie on the board in front of me.
Araujo: Also cicadas, locusts and zombie wasps.
partial: Zombie wasp. Zombie wasp. I have to sit with it for a little while.how is this bite? From a human perspective, how does the entire group of fungal species plant, Will we evolve to control the behavior of these animals?
Araujo: Well, let’s start from the beginning.
[MUSIC: Mysterious orchestral]
Araujo: Therefore, these groups evolve by host jumps.Ancestral hosts of all genera ophiocordyceps They were beetle larvae that were likely killed on trees, tree trunks that had fallen into the forest, and logs. So an ancestral lineage that infects log beetles would have pounced on log-dwelling ants. And finally, one lineage evolved the ability to manipulate behavior.
partial: And for this one can blame Ali’s totalitarian reaction to the disease outbreak.
Araujo: The driving force behind this behavioral manipulation was this phenomenon called social immunity, the ant’s public health system. So, if one of her nestmates is found to be infected, they tear it up, kill it, or expel it from the nest, keeping the disease from spreading within the colony. Therefore, behavioral manipulation was a strategy developed by fungi. Fungi guide ants to evade social immunity and leave the nest before they start to develop symptoms. , completely against the altruistic nature. So something has to break the connection that is there. So what do social insects have that allow fungi to take over the brain?
partial: So my question is: what is really holding us back get in there Understand what the fungus is doing? Why can’t we just put the spores and the unfortunate bees and ants together in the lab and see what happens?
Araujo: Yeah, but the catch is that we’re talking about tropical species. But I’m doing research with a student and they describe a new species of zombie from Pennsylvania, his ant fungus.
Partial (tape): what? hang on …
Araujo: It’s a three hour drive from New York City, which is great because it opens up even more possibilities for experimentation. This is what we are currently working on to describe the species. So it’s really new, not yet published.
Partial (tape): I need to back up the Pennsylvania thing soon. Is this the first time you’ve seen it in North America?
Araujo: No, I have described three other species of zombie ant fungus from the United States, one from South Carolina, which is Ophiocordyceps kimfremingue. the other one is Ophiocordyceps blakebarnesii from Missouri, and Ophiocordyceps camponoti-floridani in Florida. This will be my fourth.
Partials, tapes: So, I’m not going to hypothesize too much, but I think climate change plays a role, or maybe it’s always been there.
Araujo: No, it’s been there all along. But they are tricky. Imagine finding an ant. For Pennsylvania ants, the ants are brown, the fungi are brown, and the bark is brown. To find them, you really have to look for them. But now all these series are focused on these fungi.So people are aware of their existence. And while they are walking, walking their dogs in the woods, or picking mushrooms, they often now [saying]”Oh, I found cordyceps” because now they’re thinking about them.
partial: So I Needed To Know: Did You Like Joan? Last of UsDid he used to play video games?
Araujo: Hooray. This game was released in 2013, ten years before him. in Pennsylvania. Game Science Consultant was my PhD. Advisor. So I was in the right place at the right time. I have played the game since day one.
partial: Of course, as an OG fan of the game, I also wanted to know if he had any concerns about the show.
Araujo: The first big mistake is that fungi reproduce primarily through spores. It’s not about chewing. I think this bite mixed vampires and zombies into a horror show soup with fungi. It’s fiction, not science. In the game, they talk about spores, but imagine actors wearing masks and recording footage. I miss their facial expressions. Recording their voices is difficult.
Partial (tape): Doesn’t it make you crazy to inhale these things?
Araujo: No, I have been working with these fungi for 13 years. So…
Partial (tape): fine.
Araujo: If someone gets infected and turns into a zombie, keep an eye out if I start doing weird things. Maybe others will too. But I may be the first. Like I said, these fungi are really species specific. That is, one species of fungus infects one species of ant. Thus, one of these fungal species, like its closest relatives, cannot infect even the ant’s sister species. Imagine jumping from one ant to a human. It’s completely different.
partial: Joanne isn’t the only one who gets chills from these spores entering her body. These mushrooms are actually an expensive delicacy in some parts of the world.
Araujo: ophiocordyceps sinensis, It is most famous because it is Himalayan gold.but also Cordyceps cricket Chinese people consume a lot. Very expensive in that respect, these fungi are being over-harvested and driven to extinction.
[MUSIC: Dramatic orchestral]
Fungi are very poorly studied. They are potentially incredible. They can bring incredible solutions to medicine, introduced alien pests, and many other methods.
partial: If you want to be part of the fungal revolution, I think you can go look for fungi. If you’re lucky, you might spot a zombified ant or a mummified spider. But please, ask an expert before you eat them.
science fast Produced by Jeff Dervicio, Turika Bose and Kelso Harper. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.
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for Scientific Americanof science, quickI’m Alison Parshall.
