Monday, September 14, 2009

More Ant Zombies

As reported in ScienceNews, an article in American Naturalist by Anderson et al (2009) documents the process by which fungus invades ants and turns them into zombies. http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/46184/title/Death-grip_fungus_made_me_do_it

sm_killerfungus_ant.jpg200909281528.jpg

The original article in AN:

Andersen, S. B., et al. 2009. The life of a dead ant: The expression of an adaptive extended phenotype. American Naturalist, 174, (September): 424-433.

As an aside, Dretske has been working on the question that plagues everyone ... "How do you know you are not a zombie." Of course, this puzzles me daily. Required reading.



No comments: