Scientists discover a new parasitic wasp that creates zombies of spiders

In the Ecuadorian Amazon, a recently discovered wasp is turning a social spider into a heavy, lonely zombie.

The spider species, Anelosimus eximius, creates canvases similar to buckets made with thousands of members of his family. She is considered a "social spider" because she cooperates with other spiders in her common home by sharing the tasks of hunting, care and feeding.

Until a parasitoid wasp Zatypota dumped an egg on his abdomen.

Once the deposited egg of the wasp hatches, a larva emerges, attaches itself to the spider and feeds on it, sucking the blood-like hemolymph to survive. At this point, the behavior of the spider changes and becomes slave to the larva, which moves away from its common nest to create its own cocoon-shaped veil.

The larva feeds on the spider until its death, in relative safety. of the cocoon-shaped canvas that his host has just built before turning his own cocoon and becoming a beautiful royal wasp

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Philippe Fernandez-Fournier noticed the strange behavior of the spider and began to investigate. Anelosimus eximius generally do not abandon their nests, but when he saw a crawling to create an entirely new network, he was intrigued.

His research, published in Ecological Entomology, suggest that the larva of The wasp species Zatypota is able to manipulate the activity of its host, controlling its behavior and in l & # 39; Compelling to build these unusual canvases – and it could be the most advanced behavioral manipulation ever seen.

Fernandez-Fournier and his research team suspect that the wasp causes behavioral changes in the spider by "tapping into an ancestral dispersal program" … which is very similar to brain control. This is the wasp that causes starvation of spiders, forcing them to look for food on the periphery of the nest. Once out, they begin to weave webs unlike those they usually inhabit.

In the animal kingdom, the zombifying abilities of wasps are not new. Other species of spiders, such as Orb Weaver, also become reluctant hosts for wasps and some species of wasps do the same for badroaches . However, the newly discovered wasp appears to alter the network behavior of this particular spider species and its social behavior much more intensely than ever before.

How could the wasp larva achieve this? The answer to this question is not so easy to find, but several theories have been advanced, including the injection of hormones into the spider that diverts the trend of the host to build "reduced canvases during moulting". Other species of parasitoid wasps sting the brain of their hosts with a chemical badtail.

The researchers also discovered that the size of the spider colony plays a role in the number of spiders that receive zombie treatment, with larger colonies seeing larger numbers. parasitized spiders. This may seem like an obvious link to establish, but it is important to establish the dynamics between parasite and host and can help to better understand the evolutionary mechanisms involved in the relationship, certainly ominous.

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