Parasitic Wasp Reprograms Its Host Spider

Dan writes: "The New York Times has an article about a bizarre Costa Rican spider parasite. This tiny wasp larva forces its host, an orb spider, to do its bidding before killing it. Instead of building a normal round web, the spider spends its last night stringing together a frame. The larva then kills the spider and uses the frame to support its cocoon. The scientist who discovered the behavior still doesn't know how the parasite does it." Since this is an older article, there's probably some more recent information available about this critter.

Comments

National Georgaphic

[Ivan Raikov]

The August issue of the National Geographic magazine had a (what I thought to be interesting) article on spiders in general, and this larva in particular.

More information here.

spiders and drugs

[tony_gardner]

Here's the original article
http://www.psychiatry.wustl.edu/Resources/Litera tu reList/august2000/406255.pdf

Since the researchers think that it's a response of spiders to chemicals. Here's the famous spiders on drugs experiment.
http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl5pwall/spiders/spiders .h tml