nylanderi colonies unwittingly infect themselves when their members bring egg-infected woodpecker poop back to the nest as a food source. How Does the Parasite Infect Ant Colonies? brevis larvae grow into tapeworms, their full adult form.
Infected ants are less likely to flee when the bird finally comes, making them easy prey. In this case, that means keeping the ants alive long enough to be eaten by a woodpecker, a process that the parasite appears to facilitate. Like most parasites, Anomotaenia brevis has a vested interest in keeping the host alive and in relative health so the parasite can carry out its normal life cycle and produce eggs for the next generation. Read More: How Army Ants Build City-Like Nests Using Their Own Bodies The infected may even live as long as queens, which can last 20 years. Most notably, the proteins extend the ants’ lives by several fold (an exact figure has yet to be determined). How does this happen? A new paper posted to the bioRxiv preprint server concludes that the parasites flood the ants with new proteins that appear to change how their bodies function.
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