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Berry Sneaky!
By Linda | February 15, 2008
The next time you bite into a piece of fruit you better look twice!
Scientists have discovered a parasite that disguises an ant as a fruit.
When tiny, microscopic parasites called nematodes infect a gliding ant, they turn the end of the ant’s abdomen bright red. In the sunlight, it looks like a juicy berry.
Steve Yanoviak, Tropical Insect Ecologist at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock explains that the nematodes have managed to trick birds into eating their hosts the ants and this helps the nematodes spread to new ant colonies.
Normally, birds don’t eat these ants. They’re spiny, with hard exoskeletons, and they smell and taste bad.
But birds might eat this ant if it looks like something they would normally eat such as a juicy red berry.
Here’s how it works. The nematodes’ eggs are found in bird feces. Gliding ants collect the feces to feed to their larvae. The parasite hatches inside the baby ant.
So these baby ants will grow up looking like red berries. Plus, they become sluggish and disoriented , easy prey for birds.
Yanoviak said it’s just a good example of natural selection, and how parasites can manipulate their hosts to their advantage.
Topics: Animal Kingdom, Food Science, Nature, Science Factoids |
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March 30th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
[…] To see another interesting story about how another species of ant has adapted to give itself an edge in the survival game, CLICK HERE. […]