#Parasite in city unlock professional

вЂњThat was amazing to see,вЂќ Biplabendu Das, an ant biologist and parasite expert at the University of Central Florida, who wasnвЂ™t involved in the study, told me. But more than half the parasitized workers were still kicking-about the same proportion as the coloniesвЂ™ ultra-long-lived queens. By the end of their experiment, almost every single one of the hundreds of worm-free workers had, unsurprisingly, died. The researchers spent three years monitoring dozens of Temnothorax colonies in the lab, comparing the fates of workers whoвЂ™d fallen prey to the parasites and those who remained infection-free. Read: How the zombie fungus takes over antsвЂ™ bodies to control their minds. In return, they offer their host an unconventional renterвЂ™s fee: an extra-long life span that Foitzik and her colleagues managed to record in real time. The parasites hatch and set up permanent residence in the young antsвЂ™ abdomens, where they can access a steady stream of nutrients.

Normalcy goes out the door, however, when Temnothorax larvae ingest tapeworm-egg-infested bird feces trucked in by foragers. Apart from the whole freaky parasite thing, вЂњthey are pretty boring,вЂќ Foitzik told me. They first tend the queenвЂ™s eggs as nurses, then graduate into foraging roles that take them outside the nest.

#Parasite in city unlock professional

They reside in communities ruled by a single fertile queen attended by a legion of workers whose professional lives take a predictable trajectory. Under typical circumstances, Temnothorax ants live as most other ants do. вЂњSome other parasites do extend life spans,вЂќ Shelley Adamo, a parasite expert at Dalhousie University, in Nova Scotia, who was not involved in the study, told me. No one is yet sure when the insectsвЂ™ longevity tops out, but the answer is probably in excess of a decade, approaching or even matching that of ant queens, who can survive up to 20 years. Infected Temnothorax ants live at least three times longer than their siblings, and perhaps much more, she and her colleagues report in a study published today in Royal Society Open Science. But what these ants experience is more extreme than anything thatвЂ™s come before, says Susanne Foitzik, an entomologist at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, in Germany, who studies the ants and their tapeworms. They are Temnothorax ants, and their elixirs of life are the tapeworms that teem within their bellies-parasites that paradoxically prolong the life of their host at a strange and terrible cost.ДЄ few such life-lengthening partnerships have been documented between microbes and insects such as wasps, beetles, and mosquitoes. While their sisters, who have nearly identical genomes, perish within months of being born, these death-defying insects live on for years and years and years. Their scent, too, seems to shift, wafting out an alluring perfume that endears them to others. They seem to elude the ravages of old age, retaining a durably adolescent physique, their outer shells soft and their hue distinctively tawny.

Their days are spent lollygagging about the nest, where their siblings shower them with gifts of food. They are born workers, but do not do much work. Deep in the forests of Germany, nestled neatly into the hollowed-out shells of acorns, live a smattering of ants who have stumbled upon a fountain of youth.