The story of a conquest. The fruiting body of a parasitic fungus erupts from the body of its victim. Attribution: Roberto García-Roa.
Roberto García-Roa, an evolutionary biologist and conservation photographer affiliated with the University of Valencia (Spain) and Lund University (Sweden), captured this unsettling image in the Peruvian jungle of Tambopata. Roberto explains that “spores of the so-called ‘Zombie’ fungus (e.g. genera Ophiocordyceps) infect arthropods by infiltrating their exoskeleton and minds. As a result, parasitized hosts are compelled to migrate to a more favourable location for the fungus’s growth. Here, they await death, at which point the fungus feeds on its host to produce fruiting bodies full of spores that will be jettisoned to infect more victims – a conquest shaped by thousands of years of evolution.” Senior Editorial Board Member Christy Anna Hipsley comments that this image depicting a parasite-host interaction “has a depth and composition that conveys life and death simultaneously – an affair that transcends time, space, and even species. The death of the fly gives life to the fungus”.
Overall Winner of the 2022 BMC Ecology & Evolution Image Competition
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