November 14, 2013 • 22 mins
The Dexter of Parasites: Yes, in the same way Dexter preyed on other serial killers, parasitic organisms are targeted by parasites as well. Join Robert and Julie as they discuss the world of hyperparasites.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb. My name is
Julie Douglas. Julie, I want to pitch a movie idea
to you here. All right, this is a good summer movie.
Hold on, hold, I'm putting in my mouth. All right,
(00:23):
go ahead, all right, here's my elevator pitch. All right,
all right, that the kids love parasites, they love movies
about parasites. How about this, No one do a sequel.
We call it parasite to hyper parasite, and it's about
parasites that prey on parasites. M go on, kids, tell
me more about it. Well, it's actually real. It's not
just an item of science pic. It sounds like hyper
(00:43):
parasite does, sound like it would be the sequel to
a parasitic movie. But it comes down to an interesting
question parasites. All right, there's a simple view of looking
at the world of parasites. You have us, normal organisms,
and then you have the organisms that prey on us,
the criminal element in the world right there. Speak Yeah,
they're stuck in our blood. They're they're they're getting into
(01:04):
our cells. All these various heinous acts out there. Are
they getting away scott free or are the other parasites
that prey on them? And then and then how would
that work? Do those parasites have parasites as well, So
it's kind of like a parasite. This hyper parasite is
sort of like Dexter, the serial killer of serial killers,
(01:24):
though instead of killing to fulfill a need for I
guess sating the impulse to destroy and exacting a kind
of justice at the same time, these hyper parasites, I'm
gonna guess are doing this all for the energy force. Yes. Yeah,
it's it's easy to sort of to go to like
the Dexter example or like a roman Hood example or
(01:47):
Omar little example from the Wire where it's like, all right,
these are the thieves, but this guy's thieving from the thief. Uh,
these are the serial killers. This guy's killing the serial killers.
But but really, when you get get down to you
really look at the the economy aspect that we've talked
about this before, and cannibalism and animals where it all
comes down to the energy. All right, there's in nature
we have this this ecological pyramid at the bottom, the
(02:10):
very bottom level of the pyramid, you have vegetation that's growing,
depending largely upon solar energy. And then every level moving
up from that bottom level of the pyramid is some
sort of organism eating another. You eat, something's eating the grass,
something's eating that, and something else is eating Matt swooping
in until at the very top, enthroned on this mountain
of bone and flesh, you have the apex predators, who
(02:33):
are just fortunate enough to to be above all of that,
at least until they, you know, get old or break
a leg and topple down the pyramid to where a
scavenger can rip them apart. So, I mean, it really
comes down. All this comes under the fact that nature
is this this hellish world of competition, and it's all
about the economy of energy, the energy required to pass
on your genes, and anybody and everybody in this pyramid
(02:58):
will eat another, one will steal energy if they are
able to, if there is any opportunity, and that's just
the brutal truth of it. It's like a it's like
some sort of a crime movie where there's like a
gym or a you know, a suitcase full of gold
or something and every criminal in the picture is uh
is screwing over the next one to get it, until
there's just nobody actually has possession of the football anymore. Well,
(03:22):
it's interesting as humans. On top of that, the heap
of bones. You know, we tend to look at parasites
is this, you know, it's this thing that might be
invading me and causing disease. And I'm a host for this,
I'm at the top, I'm at the apex. How can
this be? And so when you hear about these hyper parasites,
is parasite on parasite action going on? You tend to
(03:42):
think of them, as you say, it's sort of like
these avengers. Yes, this robin hood bacteria is is on
my side. He's going after the thing that's after me.
So the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right right.
But in fact, these hyper parasites are just these sort
of brilliant criminal minds, because what the doing is they're
looking at, uh, these instances in nature in which other
(04:04):
parasites are really successful, and they're sort of riding on
the coattails of this. And as you say, they're going
for the big energy leap here. It doesn't happen anything
to do with avenging the host of that that the
parasite is taking advantage of. Yeah, I mean, it's an
old adage that for successful criminal their biggest enemy isn't
law enforcement but other criminals. You know, if you have
(04:24):
like an amazing grow house operation going, like somewhere in
Canada was reading les about, then you do. Uh, we're
reading articles about this a while back, and um, you know,
they get to the point where they don't have to
worry about about law enforcement. They've got that figured out.
But it's the it's the other criminals that are gonna
come and snatch your crops or or steal your money
or or something like that, and use your underground tunnels. Yes,
(04:46):
use your underground tunnels for whatever you use it for.
And if you're not smuggling through drugs and money, it's
just kind of it's annoying sometimes, That's all I'm saying. Uh, yeah, no,
I mean, I kid, but this is this parasite on
parasite examples that we see in nature. Fascinating stuff and
it's very chilling too at the same time. Can't help
but ant morphies it. Um, So we're gonna take a
(05:08):
look at a couple of examples here in nature. All right,
First up, we're gonna talk a little about wasps. Now,
we've talked about wasps a lot, especially parasitic wasps. I'm
always talking about them. I wrote an article about how
wasps work on How Stuff Work several years ago, and
and I can't stop thinking about them ever since. I
hate to kill them, even if they're even if they're
(05:30):
a nuisance in the house, do you really respect them?
I respect them. They're they're brutal, but they're they're they're
honest in their brutality. And you know, and they haven't
sold out like the honeybee and taken on this, uh,
this sigrarian lifestyle. They are still out there living a
life more or less. Yeah, but the honey bees all like, yeah,
everything would collapse without me. You guys are just being
jerks out there and showing off. Well, all right, well
(05:51):
that's an argument for another day. Yeah, Okay, let's not
reignite that. Let's not reignite that. Believe we have an
episode on that, So go back and study that if
you want more on that particular debate. But parasitic wasps, Uh,
basically we're talking about the ultimate deadbeat moms. In a sense.
They don't want to raise that larva that raise that
(06:12):
egg as their own. So what do they do? They
plant inside another critter. It wakes up inside of its
food source, it's living food source. They suppress the host
immune system, they control its growth, it's metabolism, all for
their own benefit. Sometimes they even hijack the host organism,
such as the particular parasitic wass that we saw where
the larva takes over the ladybug. It makes it it's
(06:33):
zombie master while it grows into maturity. Um. But there's
even more to that. There are parasitic wasps that are
hyper parasitic. Yeah, and it all starts with g l vs.
We've talked about this before, which are green leaf volatiles.
That's the chemical produced by a leaf that is munched
on by a caterpillar. Right, releases a signal to predators. Uh,
(06:56):
and says, hey, you know there's there's a there's a
caterpillar on me and he's eating me lunch. Yeah, it
would be great if some some wasps were to come
by and plant some larva inside of this moocher y.
That's right, And so the caterpillar, you know, unbeknownst has
limited time here because pretty soon one of two different
(07:17):
types of wasps we're talking about the cotes at Rubicla
and the Cocheesia glomarata will heed that call from those
g l V chemicals and swoop down on the caterpillar.
Now that's where the stinging and the implanting comes into play.
The eggs are deposited using that ovipositor as a stinger,
(07:37):
which of course is an egg laying organ. All wasps
that are out there stinging those are female wasps. And
so what you have is you have a caterpillar which
is now reduced to the status of a wasp incubator.
Now that in itself is sort of Ninja level waspery. Yeah,
if that's worried, but I'm gonna go ahead use it.
But that's that's nothing compared to this hyper paris sidic
(08:01):
wasp that comes into play. Yes, this particular wasp was
studied by Eric Polman of Waganagan University in the Netherlands,
and that this particular hyper parasoid uh Lazibia Nana or
l Nana as we shall henceforth college, which I'm now
thinking about a Nana like nana wasp. Yeah, well, in
a sense, you know that the nana is bringing the larva.
(08:22):
So what l nana does is it sniffs out the
particular distress calls of the plant that is being chewed
on by larva that are hijacked by these particular These
are two particular wasps. That's right, because now that chemical
uh signal has been changed yet again because is different
in inside the caterpillar that has been hijacked. So the
(08:43):
signal that is going out from the plant is no
longer saying hell if I'm under attack from caterpillars, that's
saying help, I'm under attack from a caterpillar that has
also been hijacked by a wasp. Yeah, so al nana
comes along and says, well, don't mind if I do.
They're here. This daycare center has already been a stabbed
wished saves me the trouble. So what I'm gonna do
is in the lay one of these eggs in every
(09:04):
wasp grubber pupil I can find, and when they hatch,
they're not only going to eat the host caterpillar, They're
also gonna eat any other daycare attendees inside of that organism.
It's really brilliant right, because, as you say, the other
wasps have done the work. All they have to do
is swoop in deposit and it's a very successful way
(09:24):
of trying to get that food source easily. Of course,
they do have an enemy, these hyper parasites, these wasps,
and that would be another hyper parasitoid. Usually this is
other females of the same species. And sometimes a caterpillar
may host two, three, maybe even four tiers parasites within it.
(09:46):
It's tough. It's tough being a caterpillar. Uh And but
again this really drives home just what a violent battle
royal life on Earth really is. It's just any anybody
who can will try and get larva inside of that caterpillar.
It's kind of like with the whole the l like
spying thing that came out, you know recently, we're you know,
talking about the US eavesdropping on phone calls over the world,
(10:11):
and people are outraged by it. And you know, I'm
not saying that there's not a certain amount of acceptable outrage,
but I couldn't help to think, well, you know, this
is what countries do. Countries are kind of awful and spying. Everybody,
hasn't everyone been reading the same books and seeing the
same James Bond films that I have over the years,
they would know that. So it's kind of the same
thing in the animal world. Anybody that can and has
(10:33):
the ability to will get in there and steal some energy,
steal the opportunity and wasper grade at this. I mean,
there are other species of wasps that will also slip
their young into a into another wasp nest and let
it to grow to maturity there, and then the same thing.
It'll it'll jump, it'll leap frog over the other young
and then eat them and then emerge from the washing. There.
(10:53):
There's just wonderful evil creatures on nature. It's beautiful. It
is all right, let's take a quick break and when
we get back, we are going to talk about the
zombie And all right, we're back. Now you've heard us
talk about court a steps before. Um, these are the
(11:16):
fun guy that we discussed in our Zombie Outbreak episode.
This is one where we we pretended we put on
a little radio play here in which Atlanta was was
taken over by a zombie outbreak zombie apocalypse, and we
uh decided in this particular episode that we were gonna
pin the zombie hood on a court a step. This
(11:36):
is a fungus that takes over a creature uh, generally
an insect uh. And while I'm exclusively insects, and it
takes over their bodies, turns them essentially into a zombie
and and hijacks their responses and what makes them do
something like go to a particular area, climbed to the
top of a leaf, or or go into and form
a mass grave somewhere so that they can continue to grow. Yeah,
(11:58):
and it also creates very clumsy movements by that insect.
Because again, what they're talking about here with the Cortceps
is this toxin which is taking over from the body
and creating this sort of strange machinations. Now, um, largely
this the zombie ant fungus is a story of Afio Cortceps,
(12:19):
this parasitic fungus, and the campo and a tiny carpenter
ants that infects. But of course there's another player in here,
and we'll talk about that in a moment. But what
we're talking about here is, you know, one day, nearing noon,
you have this carpenter ant, let's say, in the rainforest
in Brazil, veering off course, right, Um, it's leaving the
dry tree canopy and then it descends into the humid
(12:42):
force floor and it's staggering over debris and plants, and
David Hughes, he's an assistant professor of entomology and biology
at Penn State, describes it as a kind of drunkard swalk. Okay, again,
we're talking about this toxins taking over the brain here,
and even convulsion occurring. And then the ants, by the way,
(13:05):
who have been dissected at the stage of infection, reveal
heads already full of these fungal cells. Okay. Then the
ant clumsling makes its way to the main vein of
a leaf and it chops down, which is just weird.
Ants don't normally do this, they don't chop onto leaves,
but unfortunately here it does this, and it's mandible walk
into place as the ant dies, because now what's also
(13:28):
happening is that it's beginning to atrophy, like smuscles are
beginning to atrophy within the ant, and so that means
that those mandibles are not going to pry themselves open
at all. It's locked into place, and the death grip
is there, and a couple of days later this ant
actually dies, and what happens The fungus sprouts out of
its head and deliver spores down onto the ground. Yeah,
(13:52):
and it's a it's a real killer. You know, this
is the kind of thing that can wipe out an
ant colony. The ants, of course there have to have
evolved respond wants to this if they see signs that happening,
and they kind of a d rigorous grooming regime takes
place where they're just they're taking extra care of who's
who's acting a little funny, exact and weird get him
out of there. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a very
(14:13):
dramatic thing playing out here. If you if you look
at it like this, you know, I mean, if this
happened among our population, Um, can you imagine us trying
to actually take that person out of the group, or
the ways in which it would behave we'd say, why
why do you keep wandering into traffic? That's weird behavior, right. Yeah. So,
as it turns out, as Hughes in a two thousand
(14:33):
and twelve study highlighted, there is a high preparasite involved here.
There's not just a matter of this particular court to
set wiping out these different ant colonies looking at examples
of it, and found that some of these colonies actually
survived rather well. There were still a lot of dead bodies,
a lot of dead soldiers, a lot of carnage, but
they but in some cases they had a much better
(14:56):
uh survival rate. And the reason he discovered is a
hyper parasitic fungus that effectively castrates the courtist fungus. It
reduces the viability of its sport producing organs to six
point five. Yeah, this is amazing because you have this
other fungus that's basically taking notes and stalking the opio
(15:17):
court asps. And according to Katherine Harmon writing for Nature,
Sandra Anderson, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, they
found a different breed of that fungi growing over the
ant corpse in the emerging fungus stock, and by covering
that fungus in the stock, it effectively sort of sterilized it. Yeah,
(15:38):
that basically, this hyper parasitic fungus comes in and says, hey,
what you got going there? It seems like a pretty
good operation. I just want enough to to wep my beak,
so let me let me take over this particular ant
this particular pile of ants, and oh, yeah, you're not
gonna be spreading your franchise anymore because this is my
business now. Is that kind of your good guys a
little bit fellas? Yeah, I like it. Yeah, it's good. Um. Yeah.
(16:01):
So it is a good example of how the waste
management guys kind of come in and say, I like
what you're doing here. Yeah, all right, we're going to
look at a five tier example of hyper parasites in
action from Vanderbilt microbiologists Seth borden Stein, who may sound
familiar because we just did an episode on the Hall
of Genome and borden Stein was very much involved in
(16:23):
one of the studies there. Yeah, because he was looking
at the sony a wasp, which were featured here as well,
and he was looking more at their microbiota, their gut
microbes and how they made it. But here he's looking
really at what I think of as the tree Ducan
of the hiper parasite world. Because, as you said, this
is a five tier operation going on. Yeah, and it's
(16:45):
and it's again it's very much in a sort of
a like a like a no Country for Old Man
kind of scenario where one guy's got some money. Somebody
else comes and kills them all and takes the money,
and then somebody else is trying to kill him, and
everybody's trying to get that get that commodity, get that energy,
get that money, and the case. This is how it goes. First,
blowflies infest a bird's underside with blood sucking larva. Next
(17:06):
larva drop off, they fall to prey to parasitic wasps.
Then these wasps carry a parasitic bacterium called Wabaccia, which
has evolved to modify its host reproductive system. And then
the bacteria in turn are subject to their own invasion
from a tiny virus is known as bacteria phages, which
hijack Walbackia is cellular machinery to expand their own population. Okay, bird, blowfly, wasp, Wolbachia,
(17:35):
and then the bacterio fage. Just you can see how
it gets smaller, is it as it goes down? Right? Yeah?
As we go down that list. Yeah, And Wolbachia is
really interesting on its own, right because it hijacks the
wasp immune system and it's still being studied. But that
it all breaks down along these lines, all right. It
kills infected males. It feminizes infected males as they develop
(17:56):
as females or infertile pseudo females, and induces partheo genesis
the reproduction of infected females without males, and it makes
the sperm of uninfected males incompatible with the eggs of
uninfected females or females infected with a different Wolbachia strain. Yeah,
Wolbachia is serious stuff. We talked about it and river
Blindness our episode on that and and humans. I thought
(18:17):
this was fascinating nematodes that that when humans contract these nematodes.
The nemotodes actually contain the Wolbachia bacteria and they have
something called neutrophills, and these are specialized white blood cells
that are unable to attach to the worm itself, but
it forms a ring around the bacteria and it tacks it.
So then you have something called eosinophils, which is basically
(18:40):
like a cleanup crew that would come in. You know,
if you have this this nematode and it can't get
to the worm because these neutrophiles are essentially cloaking it.
I mean it has I think that's a fascinating sort
of power that this has, this wolbachia, because then it's
modulating the host immune system response. It's just sitting there
(19:01):
in the body, undetected at least in humans. Yeah, and
borden Stein is really interested in wall back here because
he believes that one day we might be able to
add some genes to the wall back here and use
it to control insects the vector human disease diseases like
malaria and den gay fever. Yeah, and this is really
important because it really is one of the most successful
parasites in the animal kingdom um in It evolved one
(19:23):
million years ago, so this is a pretty significant presence.
So you're probably thinking, that's it, right, It can't get
any nuttier than this. Yeah, we surely we've reached the
tiniest Russian doll and this uh, this parasitic relationship, Oh no,
because there's one single parasitic gene that exists out there.
We're talking about transposon, yes, transposable elements TE or retro transposons.
(19:48):
It's a DNA sequence that can change its position within
the genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations in altering the
cell's genome size, Yeah, they have been. These transposones have
been and discovered inside viruses that infect other viruses, which
in turn affect ambas that in fact human beings and
borde Stein says, I think it's difficult to see where
(20:09):
one organism begins and another one ends. We are only
beginning to appreciate how intertwine these layers of organisms are
in large flora and fauna, which again we come back
to that whole holo genome sort of question, like where
what is what is the barrier between one organism and
then in the next to what extent are all organisms?
As we think that all individuals really just a ship
(20:31):
with a crew, right, Yeah, you've got your mitochondrial DNA,
you've got genes, you've got bacteria, you've got have a
genetics going on, Just conglomerates of organisms just walking about
and going about their business and then trying to consume
other organisms in the process. It makes me feel like
I'm dripping like some sort of genetic material off of me,
(20:52):
or actually I am sumping little microbes off myself right now. Yeah,
I mean, really, this whole episode should dry of home
the fact that we're all kind of gross. We're called
these big piles of bacteria, and then the whole world
is just this nasty battle royal of parasites engaging with
each other, parasites and predators. And then pray actually makes
(21:15):
you feel a little bit good about the human species sometimes,
I mean just a little right, Yeah, too cous to
a certain extent, we kind of rise above that, or
at least tell ourselves that we've risen above it. Yeah,
all right, why don't you take us on out, Robert Lamb,
I think you got something for us. Yeah. This is
just a little bit from Victorian mathematician August de Morgan
which ties in nicely with today's topic. He said, great
(21:36):
fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bitem, and
little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitem. And
the great fleas themselves, in turn have greater fleas to
go on, while these again have greater still and greater
still to go on. Here you go, so that you
have it. Parasites, hyper parasites, hot parasite on parasite action
as promised, have something you'd like to throw in on
(21:57):
this another example of hyper parasites in action are just
your general response to this. This view of the world
as this violent battle royal of criminal elements. Let us
know we'd love to hear from you. You You can find
us in all the usual places, the mother Ship and
stuff to Bow you mind dot com. We're also on Tumbler, Facebook, Twitter,
Google Plus, we're mind Stuff Show on YouTube and Julie.
If they want to send us an old fashioned email,
(22:18):
how might they go about it? Oh? Well, it's really
quite easy, Robert. All you have to do is send
an email to you blow the mind at discoveries dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it How stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb. My name is
Julie Douglas. Julie, I want to pitch a movie idea
to you here. All right, this is a good summer movie.
Hold on, hold, I'm putting in my mouth. All right,
(00:23):
go ahead, all right, here's my elevator pitch. All right,
all right, that the kids love parasites, they love movies
about parasites. How about this, No one do a sequel.
We call it parasite to hyper parasite, and it's about
parasites that prey on parasites. M go on, kids, tell
me more about it. Well, it's actually real. It's not
just an item of science pic. It sounds like hyper
(00:43):
parasite does, sound like it would be the sequel to
a parasitic movie. But it comes down to an interesting
question parasites. All right, there's a simple view of looking
at the world of parasites. You have us, normal organisms,
and then you have the organisms that prey on us,
the criminal element in the world right there. Speak Yeah,
they're stuck in our blood. They're they're they're getting into
(01:04):
our cells. All these various heinous acts out there. Are
they getting away scott free or are the other parasites
that prey on them? And then and then how would
that work? Do those parasites have parasites as well, So
it's kind of like a parasite. This hyper parasite is
sort of like Dexter, the serial killer of serial killers,
(01:24):
though instead of killing to fulfill a need for I
guess sating the impulse to destroy and exacting a kind
of justice at the same time, these hyper parasites, I'm
gonna guess are doing this all for the energy force. Yes. Yeah,
it's it's easy to sort of to go to like
the Dexter example or like a roman Hood example or
(01:47):
Omar little example from the Wire where it's like, all right,
these are the thieves, but this guy's thieving from the thief. Uh,
these are the serial killers. This guy's killing the serial killers.
But but really, when you get get down to you
really look at the the economy aspect that we've talked
about this before, and cannibalism and animals where it all
comes down to the energy. All right, there's in nature
we have this this ecological pyramid at the bottom, the
(02:10):
very bottom level of the pyramid, you have vegetation that's growing,
depending largely upon solar energy. And then every level moving
up from that bottom level of the pyramid is some
sort of organism eating another. You eat, something's eating the grass,
something's eating that, and something else is eating Matt swooping
in until at the very top, enthroned on this mountain
of bone and flesh, you have the apex predators, who
(02:33):
are just fortunate enough to to be above all of that,
at least until they, you know, get old or break
a leg and topple down the pyramid to where a
scavenger can rip them apart. So, I mean, it really
comes down. All this comes under the fact that nature
is this this hellish world of competition, and it's all
about the economy of energy, the energy required to pass
on your genes, and anybody and everybody in this pyramid
(02:58):
will eat another, one will steal energy if they are
able to, if there is any opportunity, and that's just
the brutal truth of it. It's like a it's like
some sort of a crime movie where there's like a
gym or a you know, a suitcase full of gold
or something and every criminal in the picture is uh
is screwing over the next one to get it, until
there's just nobody actually has possession of the football anymore. Well,
(03:22):
it's interesting as humans. On top of that, the heap
of bones. You know, we tend to look at parasites
is this, you know, it's this thing that might be
invading me and causing disease. And I'm a host for this,
I'm at the top, I'm at the apex. How can
this be? And so when you hear about these hyper parasites,
is parasite on parasite action going on? You tend to
(03:42):
think of them, as you say, it's sort of like
these avengers. Yes, this robin hood bacteria is is on
my side. He's going after the thing that's after me.
So the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right right.
But in fact, these hyper parasites are just these sort
of brilliant criminal minds, because what the doing is they're
looking at, uh, these instances in nature in which other
(04:04):
parasites are really successful, and they're sort of riding on
the coattails of this. And as you say, they're going
for the big energy leap here. It doesn't happen anything
to do with avenging the host of that that the
parasite is taking advantage of. Yeah, I mean, it's an
old adage that for successful criminal their biggest enemy isn't
law enforcement but other criminals. You know, if you have
(04:24):
like an amazing grow house operation going, like somewhere in
Canada was reading les about, then you do. Uh, we're
reading articles about this a while back, and um, you know,
they get to the point where they don't have to
worry about about law enforcement. They've got that figured out.
But it's the it's the other criminals that are gonna
come and snatch your crops or or steal your money
or or something like that, and use your underground tunnels. Yes,
(04:46):
use your underground tunnels for whatever you use it for.
And if you're not smuggling through drugs and money, it's
just kind of it's annoying sometimes, That's all I'm saying. Uh, yeah, no,
I mean, I kid, but this is this parasite on
parasite examples that we see in nature. Fascinating stuff and
it's very chilling too at the same time. Can't help
but ant morphies it. Um, So we're gonna take a
(05:08):
look at a couple of examples here in nature. All right,
First up, we're gonna talk a little about wasps. Now,
we've talked about wasps a lot, especially parasitic wasps. I'm
always talking about them. I wrote an article about how
wasps work on How Stuff Work several years ago, and
and I can't stop thinking about them ever since. I
hate to kill them, even if they're even if they're
(05:30):
a nuisance in the house, do you really respect them?
I respect them. They're they're brutal, but they're they're they're
honest in their brutality. And you know, and they haven't
sold out like the honeybee and taken on this, uh,
this sigrarian lifestyle. They are still out there living a
life more or less. Yeah, but the honey bees all like, yeah,
everything would collapse without me. You guys are just being
jerks out there and showing off. Well, all right, well
(05:51):
that's an argument for another day. Yeah, Okay, let's not
reignite that. Let's not reignite that. Believe we have an
episode on that, So go back and study that if
you want more on that particular debate. But parasitic wasps, Uh,
basically we're talking about the ultimate deadbeat moms. In a sense.
They don't want to raise that larva that raise that
(06:12):
egg as their own. So what do they do? They
plant inside another critter. It wakes up inside of its
food source, it's living food source. They suppress the host
immune system, they control its growth, it's metabolism, all for
their own benefit. Sometimes they even hijack the host organism,
such as the particular parasitic wass that we saw where
the larva takes over the ladybug. It makes it it's
(06:33):
zombie master while it grows into maturity. Um. But there's
even more to that. There are parasitic wasps that are
hyper parasitic. Yeah, and it all starts with g l vs.
We've talked about this before, which are green leaf volatiles.
That's the chemical produced by a leaf that is munched
on by a caterpillar. Right, releases a signal to predators. Uh,
(06:56):
and says, hey, you know there's there's a there's a
caterpillar on me and he's eating me lunch. Yeah, it
would be great if some some wasps were to come
by and plant some larva inside of this moocher y.
That's right, And so the caterpillar, you know, unbeknownst has
limited time here because pretty soon one of two different
(07:17):
types of wasps we're talking about the cotes at Rubicla
and the Cocheesia glomarata will heed that call from those
g l V chemicals and swoop down on the caterpillar.
Now that's where the stinging and the implanting comes into play.
The eggs are deposited using that ovipositor as a stinger,
(07:37):
which of course is an egg laying organ. All wasps
that are out there stinging those are female wasps. And
so what you have is you have a caterpillar which
is now reduced to the status of a wasp incubator.
Now that in itself is sort of Ninja level waspery. Yeah,
if that's worried, but I'm gonna go ahead use it.
But that's that's nothing compared to this hyper paris sidic
(08:01):
wasp that comes into play. Yes, this particular wasp was
studied by Eric Polman of Waganagan University in the Netherlands,
and that this particular hyper parasoid uh Lazibia Nana or
l Nana as we shall henceforth college, which I'm now
thinking about a Nana like nana wasp. Yeah, well, in
a sense, you know that the nana is bringing the larva.
(08:22):
So what l nana does is it sniffs out the
particular distress calls of the plant that is being chewed
on by larva that are hijacked by these particular These
are two particular wasps. That's right, because now that chemical
uh signal has been changed yet again because is different
in inside the caterpillar that has been hijacked. So the
(08:43):
signal that is going out from the plant is no
longer saying hell if I'm under attack from caterpillars, that's
saying help, I'm under attack from a caterpillar that has
also been hijacked by a wasp. Yeah, so al nana
comes along and says, well, don't mind if I do.
They're here. This daycare center has already been a stabbed
wished saves me the trouble. So what I'm gonna do
is in the lay one of these eggs in every
(09:04):
wasp grubber pupil I can find, and when they hatch,
they're not only going to eat the host caterpillar, They're
also gonna eat any other daycare attendees inside of that organism.
It's really brilliant right, because, as you say, the other
wasps have done the work. All they have to do
is swoop in deposit and it's a very successful way
(09:24):
of trying to get that food source easily. Of course,
they do have an enemy, these hyper parasites, these wasps,
and that would be another hyper parasitoid. Usually this is
other females of the same species. And sometimes a caterpillar
may host two, three, maybe even four tiers parasites within it.
(09:46):
It's tough. It's tough being a caterpillar. Uh And but
again this really drives home just what a violent battle
royal life on Earth really is. It's just any anybody
who can will try and get larva inside of that caterpillar.
It's kind of like with the whole the l like
spying thing that came out, you know recently, we're you know,
talking about the US eavesdropping on phone calls over the world,
(10:11):
and people are outraged by it. And you know, I'm
not saying that there's not a certain amount of acceptable outrage,
but I couldn't help to think, well, you know, this
is what countries do. Countries are kind of awful and spying. Everybody,
hasn't everyone been reading the same books and seeing the
same James Bond films that I have over the years,
they would know that. So it's kind of the same
thing in the animal world. Anybody that can and has
(10:33):
the ability to will get in there and steal some energy,
steal the opportunity and wasper grade at this. I mean,
there are other species of wasps that will also slip
their young into a into another wasp nest and let
it to grow to maturity there, and then the same thing.
It'll it'll jump, it'll leap frog over the other young
and then eat them and then emerge from the washing. There.
(10:53):
There's just wonderful evil creatures on nature. It's beautiful. It
is all right, let's take a quick break and when
we get back, we are going to talk about the
zombie And all right, we're back. Now you've heard us
talk about court a steps before. Um, these are the
(11:16):
fun guy that we discussed in our Zombie Outbreak episode.
This is one where we we pretended we put on
a little radio play here in which Atlanta was was
taken over by a zombie outbreak zombie apocalypse, and we
uh decided in this particular episode that we were gonna
pin the zombie hood on a court a step. This
(11:36):
is a fungus that takes over a creature uh, generally
an insect uh. And while I'm exclusively insects, and it
takes over their bodies, turns them essentially into a zombie
and and hijacks their responses and what makes them do
something like go to a particular area, climbed to the
top of a leaf, or or go into and form
a mass grave somewhere so that they can continue to grow. Yeah,
(11:58):
and it also creates very clumsy movements by that insect.
Because again, what they're talking about here with the Cortceps
is this toxin which is taking over from the body
and creating this sort of strange machinations. Now, um, largely
this the zombie ant fungus is a story of Afio Cortceps,
(12:19):
this parasitic fungus, and the campo and a tiny carpenter
ants that infects. But of course there's another player in here,
and we'll talk about that in a moment. But what
we're talking about here is, you know, one day, nearing noon,
you have this carpenter ant, let's say, in the rainforest
in Brazil, veering off course, right, Um, it's leaving the
dry tree canopy and then it descends into the humid
(12:42):
force floor and it's staggering over debris and plants, and
David Hughes, he's an assistant professor of entomology and biology
at Penn State, describes it as a kind of drunkard swalk. Okay, again,
we're talking about this toxins taking over the brain here,
and even convulsion occurring. And then the ants, by the way,
(13:05):
who have been dissected at the stage of infection, reveal
heads already full of these fungal cells. Okay. Then the
ant clumsling makes its way to the main vein of
a leaf and it chops down, which is just weird.
Ants don't normally do this, they don't chop onto leaves,
but unfortunately here it does this, and it's mandible walk
into place as the ant dies, because now what's also
(13:28):
happening is that it's beginning to atrophy, like smuscles are
beginning to atrophy within the ant, and so that means
that those mandibles are not going to pry themselves open
at all. It's locked into place, and the death grip
is there, and a couple of days later this ant
actually dies, and what happens The fungus sprouts out of
its head and deliver spores down onto the ground. Yeah,
(13:52):
and it's a it's a real killer. You know, this
is the kind of thing that can wipe out an
ant colony. The ants, of course there have to have
evolved respond wants to this if they see signs that happening,
and they kind of a d rigorous grooming regime takes
place where they're just they're taking extra care of who's
who's acting a little funny, exact and weird get him
out of there. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a very
(14:13):
dramatic thing playing out here. If you if you look
at it like this, you know, I mean, if this
happened among our population, Um, can you imagine us trying
to actually take that person out of the group, or
the ways in which it would behave we'd say, why
why do you keep wandering into traffic? That's weird behavior, right. Yeah. So,
as it turns out, as Hughes in a two thousand
(14:33):
and twelve study highlighted, there is a high preparasite involved here.
There's not just a matter of this particular court to
set wiping out these different ant colonies looking at examples
of it, and found that some of these colonies actually
survived rather well. There were still a lot of dead bodies,
a lot of dead soldiers, a lot of carnage, but
they but in some cases they had a much better
(14:56):
uh survival rate. And the reason he discovered is a
hyper parasitic fungus that effectively castrates the courtist fungus. It
reduces the viability of its sport producing organs to six
point five. Yeah, this is amazing because you have this
other fungus that's basically taking notes and stalking the opio
(15:17):
court asps. And according to Katherine Harmon writing for Nature,
Sandra Anderson, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, they
found a different breed of that fungi growing over the
ant corpse in the emerging fungus stock, and by covering
that fungus in the stock, it effectively sort of sterilized it. Yeah,
(15:38):
that basically, this hyper parasitic fungus comes in and says, hey,
what you got going there? It seems like a pretty
good operation. I just want enough to to wep my beak,
so let me let me take over this particular ant
this particular pile of ants, and oh, yeah, you're not
gonna be spreading your franchise anymore because this is my
business now. Is that kind of your good guys a
little bit fellas? Yeah, I like it. Yeah, it's good. Um. Yeah.
(16:01):
So it is a good example of how the waste
management guys kind of come in and say, I like
what you're doing here. Yeah, all right, we're going to
look at a five tier example of hyper parasites in
action from Vanderbilt microbiologists Seth borden Stein, who may sound
familiar because we just did an episode on the Hall
of Genome and borden Stein was very much involved in
(16:23):
one of the studies there. Yeah, because he was looking
at the sony a wasp, which were featured here as well,
and he was looking more at their microbiota, their gut
microbes and how they made it. But here he's looking
really at what I think of as the tree Ducan
of the hiper parasite world. Because, as you said, this
is a five tier operation going on. Yeah, and it's
(16:45):
and it's again it's very much in a sort of
a like a like a no Country for Old Man
kind of scenario where one guy's got some money. Somebody
else comes and kills them all and takes the money,
and then somebody else is trying to kill him, and
everybody's trying to get that get that commodity, get that energy,
get that money, and the case. This is how it goes. First,
blowflies infest a bird's underside with blood sucking larva. Next
(17:06):
larva drop off, they fall to prey to parasitic wasps.
Then these wasps carry a parasitic bacterium called Wabaccia, which
has evolved to modify its host reproductive system. And then
the bacteria in turn are subject to their own invasion
from a tiny virus is known as bacteria phages, which
hijack Walbackia is cellular machinery to expand their own population. Okay, bird, blowfly, wasp, Wolbachia,
(17:35):
and then the bacterio fage. Just you can see how
it gets smaller, is it as it goes down? Right? Yeah?
As we go down that list. Yeah, And Wolbachia is
really interesting on its own, right because it hijacks the
wasp immune system and it's still being studied. But that
it all breaks down along these lines, all right. It
kills infected males. It feminizes infected males as they develop
(17:56):
as females or infertile pseudo females, and induces partheo genesis
the reproduction of infected females without males, and it makes
the sperm of uninfected males incompatible with the eggs of
uninfected females or females infected with a different Wolbachia strain. Yeah,
Wolbachia is serious stuff. We talked about it and river
Blindness our episode on that and and humans. I thought
(18:17):
this was fascinating nematodes that that when humans contract these nematodes.
The nemotodes actually contain the Wolbachia bacteria and they have
something called neutrophills, and these are specialized white blood cells
that are unable to attach to the worm itself, but
it forms a ring around the bacteria and it tacks it.
So then you have something called eosinophils, which is basically
(18:40):
like a cleanup crew that would come in. You know,
if you have this this nematode and it can't get
to the worm because these neutrophiles are essentially cloaking it.
I mean it has I think that's a fascinating sort
of power that this has, this wolbachia, because then it's
modulating the host immune system response. It's just sitting there
(19:01):
in the body, undetected at least in humans. Yeah, and
borden Stein is really interested in wall back here because
he believes that one day we might be able to
add some genes to the wall back here and use
it to control insects the vector human disease diseases like
malaria and den gay fever. Yeah, and this is really
important because it really is one of the most successful
parasites in the animal kingdom um in It evolved one
(19:23):
million years ago, so this is a pretty significant presence.
So you're probably thinking, that's it, right, It can't get
any nuttier than this. Yeah, we surely we've reached the
tiniest Russian doll and this uh, this parasitic relationship, Oh no,
because there's one single parasitic gene that exists out there.
We're talking about transposon, yes, transposable elements TE or retro transposons.
(19:48):
It's a DNA sequence that can change its position within
the genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations in altering the
cell's genome size, Yeah, they have been. These transposones have
been and discovered inside viruses that infect other viruses, which
in turn affect ambas that in fact human beings and
borde Stein says, I think it's difficult to see where
(20:09):
one organism begins and another one ends. We are only
beginning to appreciate how intertwine these layers of organisms are
in large flora and fauna, which again we come back
to that whole holo genome sort of question, like where
what is what is the barrier between one organism and
then in the next to what extent are all organisms?
As we think that all individuals really just a ship
(20:31):
with a crew, right, Yeah, you've got your mitochondrial DNA,
you've got genes, you've got bacteria, you've got have a
genetics going on, Just conglomerates of organisms just walking about
and going about their business and then trying to consume
other organisms in the process. It makes me feel like
I'm dripping like some sort of genetic material off of me,
(20:52):
or actually I am sumping little microbes off myself right now. Yeah,
I mean, really, this whole episode should dry of home
the fact that we're all kind of gross. We're called
these big piles of bacteria, and then the whole world
is just this nasty battle royal of parasites engaging with
each other, parasites and predators. And then pray actually makes
(21:15):
you feel a little bit good about the human species sometimes,
I mean just a little right, Yeah, too cous to
a certain extent, we kind of rise above that, or
at least tell ourselves that we've risen above it. Yeah,
all right, why don't you take us on out, Robert Lamb,
I think you got something for us. Yeah. This is
just a little bit from Victorian mathematician August de Morgan
which ties in nicely with today's topic. He said, great
(21:36):
fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bitem, and
little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitem. And
the great fleas themselves, in turn have greater fleas to
go on, while these again have greater still and greater
still to go on. Here you go, so that you
have it. Parasites, hyper parasites, hot parasite on parasite action
as promised, have something you'd like to throw in on
(21:57):
this another example of hyper parasites in action are just
your general response to this. This view of the world
as this violent battle royal of criminal elements. Let us
know we'd love to hear from you. You You can find
us in all the usual places, the mother Ship and
stuff to Bow you mind dot com. We're also on Tumbler, Facebook, Twitter,
Google Plus, we're mind Stuff Show on YouTube and Julie.
If they want to send us an old fashioned email,
(22:18):
how might they go about it? Oh? Well, it's really
quite easy, Robert. All you have to do is send
an email to you blow the mind at discoveries dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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