text: For those of you not familiar with Cordyceps fungus, that’s the one that attacks insects (and other arthropods) by infecting and then spreading through the whole body. The result is something like what you see below:
  Each one of those little growths is a “fruiting body” and that is where the fungus releases its spores in order to found new patches of fungus. The most famous of these kinds of fungi is perhaps Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which infects ants and influences their behaviour. The fungus forces an ant to climb a blade of grass or a twig and then attach there until it dies. Meanwhile the fungus produces a series of fruiting bodies that release spores from the new vantage point – the height helps those spores to disperse a greater distance. Apparently fossilised plants from 50m years ago also bear the marks of these Cordyceps-related attachments by insects, suggesting that this is an old battle.
  What we don’t know is the extent to which Cordyceps influences the behaviour of other hosts. I posted the image above because it is the first time that I have seen a dragonfly infected in this way. It would make more sense (to me, at least!) for Cordyceps infecting a dragonfly to make it fly upwards while the fruiting bodies are releasing spores to broadcast those offspring as far as possible. However, the only image I have seen is this one where the animal is firmly rooted to the perch.
  If it was a parasite that affected dragonfly flight then it wouldn’t be the first. A few recent studies (e.g. Suhonen et al. 2010) have suggested that dragonflies infected with parasitic mites that cling to the outside of the animal result in greater movement. It has been suggested that this could be an attempt to get out of an area with a high parasite population – after all, that’s not a great place to raise your little dragonfly family. However, we think this response has evolved to help the host and not the parasite, which is the opposite to the response elicited by the manipulative Cordyceps.
  References
  Suhonen, J., Honkavaara, J., Rantala, M.J. (2010) Activation of the immune system promotes insect dispersal in the wild, Oecologia, 162 (3): 541-547.
  Image credit: Paul Bertner, https://flic.kr/p/qodUNR, all rights reserved, used with permission.
  Blood-sucking mites are worse in mid-summer for damselflies
  November 26, 2014 November 1, 2015 Katatrepsis2 Comments	
  Background: Parasites drain resources from their hosts in order to survive and reproduce. The effects that this has on the host have been shown to be substantial in some species of dragonfly and damselfly. However, in order to assess how serious these effects are, we need to know something about patterns of parasitism: how many parasites does an animal carry and how does that number vary throughout the year?
  What we did: We had a two year study looking at a single population of the azure damselfly, Coenagrion puella, at a single site in southern England. All the damselflies (1036 in total) emerging from the pond were caught, marked individually, and the number of parasitic mites that were clinging to them were counted. Technically these mites don’t suck blood, but they do feed on the “haemolymph” of the insects, which is the insect equivalent. We had a number of hypotheses as to what might drive variations in parasitism: higher temperatures might increase the effectiveness of mites at finding and latching-on to hosts, larger animals might have more parasites, or there might be a difference between sexes in parasitism. We found that most of the variation in parasitism was related to the animals emerging in the middle of the season having the most parasites, while animals emerging early or late had fewer parasites.
  Importance: The seasonal pattern suggests that variation in parasitism is the result of ecological interactions where parasites have evolved to take advantage of their hosts’ patterns of development. Given that dragonflies and damselflies have been shown to be emerging at different times in response to climate change, it remains to be seen whether mites will be able to track these changes.
  This is part of a series of short lay summaries that describe the technical publications I have authored. This paper, entitled “Phenology determines seasonal variation in ectoparasite loads in a natural insect population”, was published in the journal Ecological Entomology in 2010. You can find this paper online at the publisher, or on Figshare.
  Image credit: Brad Smith, CC BY-NC 2.0, http://bit.ly/1q6YTeA
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