New species of parasitic fungus discovered in a fossilized ant

Sayak Banerjee, Amity University Kolkata

The finding of the oldest fungus species parasitizing fossilized ant

Fossils aid in deciphering a huge amount of prehistoric life, although everything cannot be interpreted from them. A research team from the Integrative Biology department of Oregon State University (OSU) has discovered a novel fungal genus and species in an ant which was preserved in 50 million years old amber from the Baltic region in Europe. They identified the fungus as a mushroom that was developing from a carpenter ant. The reproductive structure of several fungi is generally represented in the form of a mushroom, the one which is usually found growing in our backyards. It was said to be the most ancient specimen of fungus living as a parasite on the ant.

This finding was reported in the Fungal Biology part of the journal Elsevier and its lead author, OSU’s George Poinar Jr. is an international specialist in working with amber-derived preserved forms of plant and animal life learning about the biology and ecology of ancient times. He named the newly discovered Ascomycota fungi, Allocordyceps baltica.

Carpenter Ants and their Camponitini tribe

The researcher said that ants serve as a host to numerous parasites and some of these parasites play a role in altering the behaviour of the insects. This modification in the insects’ behaviour is accompanied by the benefit in the dispersion as well as the growth of the parasites. The carpenter ants belong to the Camponotini tribe and they normally build their nests in trees, stumps, and rotting logs. They are exclusively prone to fungal pathogens, mostly of the genus Ophiocordyceps. This includes even those species which when infects the ant, the infected ants bite into different erect plant parts just before their death. As an explanation of this, it was said that by doing so the ants place themselves in a favourable position. This posture enables the liberation of fungal spores from the cup-shaped ascomata, the fungus’s fruiting body, which sticks out from the head and neck of the ants.

A new specimen of the Ascomycota class of Fungi

The novel fungal species not only inherit similar features to that of Ophiocordyceps but also exhibit several stages of development that were never seen earlier. While naming its genus, Poinar Jr. used the Greek term for new, that is ‘alloios’, and merged it with the known genus name Cordyceps. He observed a big cup-shaped, orange-coloured ascoma with developing perithecia rising from the ant’s rectum. These flask-shaped structures release the spores out. There were many freestanding fungal bodies also bearing structures similar to perithecia along with some sac-like structures where the spores are meant to develop. The vegetative part of the fungus was seen emerging from both the neck and the abdomen. They confirmed that all the stages of development seen attached to the ant in addition to the freestanding ones are of the same species. This specimen of fungus was not placed in the known ant-infecting genus Ophiocordyceps because, in the latter species, the ascomata typically emerge from the head or the neck but not from the rectum. It was evident that Allocordyceps correspond to a fungal infection of a Camponotus ant. The researchers stated this finding to be the first fossil record of a member of the Hypocreales order protruding from an ant’s body. Moreover, being the earliest record of fungal parasitism in ants, it can be employed in future studies concerning which the origin of the fungus-ant association could be further analyzed.

Also read: First Cadaveric Liver Transplantation in India by HOPE pump

Reference:

1. Poinar, G., Maltier, Y-M. Allocordyceps baltica gen. et sp. nov. (Hypocreales: Clavicipitaceae), an ancient fungal parasite of an ant in Baltic amber, Fungal Biology, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.funbio.2021.06.002.

About Author:

Sayak Banerjee is a 3^rd year Biotechnology Engineering Student with great interest in Immunology and Molecular genetics. He is a creative scientific writer at Bioxone with an inclination towards gaining knowledge regarding various area of Biotechnology and emphasizing himself in various wet lab skills.

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