fire ants zombiefied by some flies..

Life Cycle

Pseudacteon are solitary parasitoids. Each female Pseudacteon may produce 100 - 300 eggs (Zacaro and Porter 2003). The adult female inserts a single egg into a worker ant with a hypodermic- style ovipositor in a rapid aerial attack. The egg is inserted into the thorax region, and the larva migrates to the head capsule of the worker. There are three instars, during which time worker ants appear to behave normally until just before pupariation.

At pupariation, the tissue inside the ant's head capsule is consumed, killing the ant in the process. The ant's head usually falls off, and the mouth parts are pushed away so that the puparium is visible inside the oral cavity. The pupa completes development in the head capsule, and the adult fly emerges from the oral cavity.

Larval development takes 2-3 weeks and pupal development requires an additional 2-3 weeks, depending upon temperature and the Pseudacteon species (larger species have longer developmental times) (Porter et al. 1995b, Morrison et al. 1997). Development in Pseudacteon has been studied most thoroughly in P. litoralis (Porter et al. 1995b) and P. tricuspis (Consoli et al. 2001). Sex in most Pseudacteon species is apparently determined environmentally, with males produced from smaller workers and females produced from larger workers (Morrison and Gilbert 1998, Morrison et al. 1999b).

Female Pseudacteon are attracted to worker ants at disturbed mounds, mating flights, or foraging trails, although host location behavior varies among species (Orr et al. 1997). Introduced P. tricuspis in Florida were primarily attracted to interspecific interactions involving their hosts (Morrison and King 2004). In some Pseudacteon species, males are also attracted to host ants where Pseudacteon matings occur. In other Pseudacteon species, however, males have not been collected in the vicinity of their host ants (although females may be abundant) and mating apparently occurs elsewhere (Morrison et al. 2000).

lol please disregard the copy & paste stuff in the first(=original) post of this thread lol that was wrongly copied & pasted lol.. please look at the second post 🙂

so the brains of fire ants get eaten by the flies..just sound about zombies!

Hopefully they never get the bright Idea to bring bot flies here.