bugs
Paleomycology: Discovering the fungal contemporaries of dinosaurs
Fungi tend to be small, soft, and ephemeral — properties that don’t exactly help establish a strong presence in the fossil record. But they certainly have been around for a long time (perhaps 4 billion years?). Here we explore some of the fungi of the distant past, including some molds preserved perfectly in amber for tens of millions of years.
Entomophaga maimaiga – The caterpillar killer
Since we’d rather not let gypsy moth caterpillars eat the leaves off entire forests, we’re pretty happy about Entomophaga maimaiga, a fungus that attacks them. In this post we take a close-up, time lapse look at the devouring of a caterpillar by a fungus that is an effective agent of biological control.
Furia ithacensis
Well now, everyone likes a dead fly, but I’m here to tell you that some dead flies are more spectacular than others. Like these gloriously dead snipe flies, exploded by a fungus that is named after my home town. If I were a birder, I’d call this find a “good bird,” and tick it off on my life list. Do you have a life list?
The Insect-Fungus War: Behavioral Fever
A student in pp309 wrote this post.
When people talk about fungi it’s usually in the context of a tasty dish, or that fuzzy brown thing on your peach, but rarely ever are fungi referred to as deft, vicious killers. What you say? Killers? Well, fungal pathogens have long preyed on insects, claiming [...]
A spider’s nightmare
From your editor, Kathie Hodge
In the contest for Ickiest Thing, spiders and molds are about neck and neck. Personally, I’m rooting for molds. To demonstrate their clear superiority over spiders, I now present these two tableaux of death, captured in glorious detail by photographer Kent Loeffler.
This first little fungus, a mold called Nomuraea atypicola, [...]