A new zombie pathogen has been discovered in Ireland. This insidious fungus infects cave spiders and alters their behavior to help spread its spores to new victims.
In 2021, a BBC TV crew made a creepy discovery: a fungus-covered spider stuck to the ceiling in an abandoned gunpowder store in Northern Ireland. On closer examination by experts, the spider was identified as the cave-dwelling orb-weaver Metellina merianae, while the fungus appeared to be a new species. It was later added to the long list of things named after presenter David Attenborough: Gibellula attenboroughii.
Later expeditions found similar scenes in natural cave systems. Infected spiders were found on the walls or ceilings of caves throughout Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, while other suspected cases were identified in older scientific literature from across the British Isles.
The story sounds like something right out of a horror movie: this fungus hacks the brain of its host, driving the normally shy spiders out of their lairs and webs to an exposed surface. Once there, the spider will die, giving the fungus a nice environment to grow until it can release its spores. The circulating air currents of the cave then carry those spores to find new potential hosts, and the ghastly cycle begins again.
If that sounds familiar, you’ve either heard a similar story about how the ophiocordyceps fungus genus preys on ants – or played/watched the video game/TV series The Last of Us, which imagines a zombie apocalypse triggered by a similar fungal pathogen in humans.
Exactly how the fungus manipulates the spiders remains unknown, but the researchers say that further study should investigate the metabolites they produce, as well as what effects the infection has on spider populations.
This is just one of many horror stories in the insect world. A certain wasp species hijacks spiders to make them build a special cocoon web for the wasp larvae – which then eat the spider before settling in to pupate.
Spiders aren’t entirely innocent though: they’ve been seen hacking fireflies snared in their webs to flash in mating patterns, cleverly attracting even more fireflies to the web.
The new study was published in the journal Fungal Systematics and Evolution (PDF).
Source: CABI
