One of the best ways that scientists discover small insects and fossilized plants are locked up inside the amber. Amber can save the specimen as it was the day he entered the sticky environment. A new research study has been published by focusing on an interesting discovery of a fossilized ant with a new genus and funny parasite species.
The piece of amber has an ant inside that has a fungus that grows from one’s body. The discovery was named Allocordyceps Baltica by the team that found it. It is a new type of Ascomycota fungus attached to the ant, which both have been preserved 50 million years old. The insect and its parasite have been discovered in the Baltic region of Europe.
Ant ants are known to be afflicted with strange pests, some of which may change the behavior of the insect to benefit the development and dispersion of the parasite. Carpenter ants are particularly sensitive to fungal pathogens of the genus ophiocordyceps. The new kind fungal and species shares some features with ophiocordyceps but also shows previously unknown development stages.
The researchers can see large, orange, Ascoma cup form with developed bottle structures that release spores called perélecia. The mushroom perithec is exceeding the rectum of the ant while the vegetative part of the fungus comes out of the abdomen and the base of the neck.
The researchers also see what seems to be bags where the spores for the fungus would grow. There are also self-supporting fungal bodies featuring what seems to be a perithec. All stages, including autonomous persons and those attached to the ant, are the same species. An interesting discovery on this particular fossil is that the first Fossil file that shows a member of the order of hypocetes emerging from the body of an ant.