anders
Faculty and Staff
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Joined: 02 Sep 2003
Posts: 34
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 Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 12:53 pm Post subject: Worm turns grasshoppers into suicidal zombies |
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 The hairworm Spinochordodes tellinii lives and breeds in water, but it must spend part of its life cycle eating the insides of grasshoppers and crickets. When it is fully grown, it has to return to the water and it does so by altering the grasshopper host’s behavior, causing the grasshopper to leap into a body of water.
Biologists from the French National Center for Scientific Research in Montpellier, France, led by Frédéric Thomas and David Biron, have now identified certain proteins that the worm injects into the grasshoppers brain prior to its water-seeking behavior change.
| The New York Times 9/6/05 wrote: | They did their fieldwork around a swimming pool on the border of a forest near Avène les Bains in southern France. Hordes of infected grasshoppers - more than 100 a night - arrive at the pool during summer nights at the behest of the parasites.
The biologists captured grasshoppers before their suicidal plunge and removed the worms.
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"We found the parasite produces and injects proteins into the brain of its host," Dr. Thomas said.
Two of the proteins belonged to a well-known family of signaling agents known as the Wnt family that are deployed in developing the cells of the nervous system.
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A video of the grasshoppers and hairworms can be viewed at
http://www.canal.ird.fr/canal.php?url=/programmes/recherches/grillons_us/index.htm
 New York Times article |
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