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Sac Fungus

Cordyceps sp.

Photo by John B.
Published on Project Noah
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15.4561, 119.922

Field Notes

Description:

Cordyceps, according to Wikipedia, is a genus of Sac Fungi which are parasitic mainly on insects and other arthropods. The Wiki article on Cordyceps is rather heavy reading as it uses scientific terminology with which only fungus specialists could be comfortable. However, when I clicked on "entomopathogenic fungi", it linked into a related article which (despite being heavily laced with similar terminology) immediately revealed some pictures of insects which had been parasitized. One of these insects was a wasp which appeared to be in a similar condition to the spider in my photos. It had been parasitized by the fungus Cordyceps. None the less, I really wanted some information about this kind of fungus, specifically in relation to spiders (not just "other arthropods") and I came across an informative and very entertaining article - https://www.uksafari.com/curse_of_the_zombie_spiders.htm. It is well written in a humorous style, but more importantly for my purpose, it has several pictures of spiders in the same condition as the one in my photos.

Habitat:

This fungus was spotted on a spider in our backyard,

Notes:

The spider in this spotting is a Heteropoda venatoria (female) and the green nylon fishing net was a makeshift addition to the fence around our vegetable plot, hastily thrown up, to keep out free-range chickens which were scratching up and eating seeds quicker than we could plant them.

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Photographed
PublishedDecember 24, 2022

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