Zombie fly fungus lures healthy male flies to mate with female corpses (2022)
phys.org
phys.org
He’s a Licht! It says so right there!
> From Middle High German liecht, from Old High German lioht, from Proto-West Germanic *leuht, from Proto-Germanic *leuhtaz, from Proto-Indo-European *lewk-. Compare Dutch licht, English light.
> light, bright (luminescent)
> unobstructed, clear
(The Dutch word, like the English word, also means "the opposite of heavy".)
( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/licht#Etymology )
Lich comes from Old English lic, a completely different kind of word form. [The Old English form suggested by light is liht, but in fact the OE word is leoht.]
It is unrelated to light; instead, the more common descendant of lic in modern English is the word like.
“De Fine Licht” in English looks like a funny spelling of “The Fine Lich,” like we’re describing a good looking undead wizard. False cognates lead to funny coincidences.
seeing that cordyceps is distributed this way, I think it could be seen as a deliberate reproductive strategy
The other day I encountered an example in David Goulson's recent book Silent Earth (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56470413-silent-earth) that I did not know yet about; the emerald cockroach wasp (ampulex compressa).
Rough transcription; for its reproduction, the wasp injects a cockroach with poison to paralyze it, then stings it in exactly that part of the brain responsible for its flight reflex to make it docile. After knibbling a bit on the cockroach's antennae and enjoying the hemolymph seeping out of the cockrach, the wasp takes the cockroach by its antennae and, even though it is much bigger than the wasp, directs it to its nest like a dog on a leech. In the nest of the cockroach the wasp lays an egg, which soon hatches a larvae that in turn proceeds to eat the cockroach alive while it is still dazed...And this is just the top of the ice berg.
Does it lure females to copulate with the male corpses? Or males?
> Housefly males are able to distinguish between male and female cadavers also when covered in infectious E. muscae conidia, and appear to readily initiate courtship and mating strikes towards infected female cadavers.
or maybe they mate often enough to spread it to more females