Zombie-ant fungus attacked by non-zombifying fungus

If you’re not a myrmecologist, you might have missed last year’s news that a fungus attacking carpenter ants in the Brazilian rainforest was infecting their brains, prompting them to walk to someplace where the fungus can grow, and killing them. It’s widely known as “the zombie-ant fungus,” because people who study insects in rainforests get slaphappy after a while.

Now it turns out the zombie-ant fungus is itself being attacked by a fungus, only unfortunately this fungus does not turn the zombie-ant fungus into a zombie-zombie-ant-fungus.

Ant researchers say this is evidence we should be doing way more ant research.

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