Photo Feature
Cannibalising The Queen
Red worker ants dispose off their colony’s large dead queen, which caught an Ophiocordyceps fungus infection. Contagions could potentially wipe out entire colonies. There are about 140 species of Ophiocordyceps fungi, of which Ophiocordyceps unilateralis parasitises ants. Soon, behavioural changes take place in infected ants that leave the nest and affix their mandibles to the underside of a leaf, and die macabre deaths with the fungus literally growing out of the ant’s head.
Photo: Apurv Dilip Jadhav