Terror in nature: they discover a wasp that enslaves spiders for them to fulfill their orders

(N + 1 Agency / Beatriz de Vera). A newly discovered wasp species inside of the Amazon of Ecuador is able to turn a spider into a Zombie-like dronewho leaves his colony to execute the orders of his new owner. Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC, Canada) who studied in Ecuador studied the different types of parasites that live in spider nests. Anelosimus eximius.

The authors, who published this discovery in Ecological etology, details the first example of this slave relationship between a new wasp of the species Zatypota and a social spider Anelosimus eximiu. "Wasps manipulating the behavior of spiders have already been observed, but not at such a complex level," said Philippe Fernández-Fournier, lead author of the study and former master's student in the department of zoology of the UBC.

Use of the data collected in Ecuador For different projects between 2012 and 2017, researchers began to reconstruct the life cycle of the wasp and its parasitic relationship with the spider. The expert is surprised, too, because the wasp to force the spider to leave his colony, which happens very rarely. Anelosimus eximiu is one of about 25 social spider species All over the world, they live in large colonies, cooperate in catching prey, share the duties of their parents and seldom move away from their nests.

The method

It's not yet known how wasps do this, but scientists believe that this can be caused by a hormone injection that make the spider think that it is at a different stage of life or that it is disperse from the colony.

What they found was equal parts fascinating and horrible: after an adult female lays an egg in the abdomen of a spider, the larva hatches and adheres to the host. Then, probably, he feeds on the hemolymph, similar to the blood of the spider, which grows and takes the body slowly. The spider now "zombified" leaves the colony and waits patiently to be killed and consumed.

After a feast with the spiderthe larvae penetrate into its protected cocoon and come out completely formed nine to eleven days later. "The wasp It completely diverts the behavior and brain of the spider and makes it do something that it would never do, like leaving its nest and transforming a completely different structure. It's very dangerous for these little spiders, "he says. Samantha Straus, co-author of the study.

This news was originally published in N + 1, a science that adds up.