Last year I wrote about the emerald cockroach wasp, Ampulex compressa, which injects venom into cockroaches to turn them into zombie hosts for their parasitic offspring. (More posts on Ampulex here.) The scientists I wrote about have been trying to figure out what exactly the venom does to the nervous system of their victims, and they've discovered that it interferes with a neurotransmitter called octopamine. New Scientist has an update. And they also have a link to a YouTube video that offers more than you may want to see of this awesome parasitic manipulation.
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Many parasites alter their hosts behavior by small manipulations in the brain that go largely unnoticed by the host until its eaten by another. But not all use so much finesse. This week's parasite is probably the rudest as far as mechanisms go - luckily, their hosts are cockroaches, so we don't…
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Ampulex and Cockroach is such a great story!
We had some guesses about the neurophysiological mechanism but now Lior Rosenberg did a great job in this paper (http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/210/24/4411) to show not only that Octopamine has this de-zombie-ing effect but also which other neuromodulators do not affect the stung cockroach.
And mentioning evolution in action and parasitic systems, a paper in Nature reports an adaptive arms-race frozen in mud! (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v450/n7171/full/nature06291.html)