"Stranger than science fiction." That's how an ecologist describes a strange fungus that hijacks cicadas’ bodies and behavior, turning them into "zombies."
CNN reports on the the fungus Massospora cicadina and how it's impacting some of the cicadas emerging this year: https://flip.it/cxfw5K
Small but mighty, plankton are some of the most powerful creatures on Earth.
For @TheConversationUS, a marine conservationist writes: "Plankton are critical to marine ecosystems and to humans, but often glide under the radar of our interest."
"Known as the enteric nervous system, these neurons are commonly referred to as our 'second brain', but a new study from Australia suggests these neurons may actually be the very 'first brain' that our mammalian ancestors evolved."
Many years ago, on another platform, someone said that humans are digestive tracts that eventually evolved nervous systems and brains, and not the other way around.
And that has forever changed how I think about being human.
"The insect world is full of species of parasitic wasps that spend their infancy eating other insects alive. And for reasons that scientists don’t fully understand, they have repeatedly adopted and tamed wild, disease-causing viruses and turned them into biological weapons. Half a dozen examples already are described, and new research hints at many more."