To answer Brigid’s question: while foraging and gathering food to bring back to the colony, ants come across the spores of the cordyceps fungi. Any species of ant can inadvertently encounter it, but different fungi have adapted to affect different species, so cordyceps will only infect the insect and grow a stalk to release more spores if the fungus has “coevolved” with the ant. I read about this at livescience: http://www.livescience.com/47751-zombie-fungus-picky-about-ant-brains.html
Antibiotics target a structure and/or a process inside a bacterial cell so antibiotics could target one or many bacterial species. What type of therapeutic would target a fungi?
Citizen Science 2017 
I wonder how insects come in contact with cordyceps fungi.
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Can you find out if there are other insects than ants?
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To answer Brigid’s question: while foraging and gathering food to bring back to the colony, ants come across the spores of the cordyceps fungi. Any species of ant can inadvertently encounter it, but different fungi have adapted to affect different species, so cordyceps will only infect the insect and grow a stalk to release more spores if the fungus has “coevolved” with the ant. I read about this at livescience: http://www.livescience.com/47751-zombie-fungus-picky-about-ant-brains.html
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Nice! So is it similar with antibiotics that one fungi only affect one species?
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*affects
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Antibiotics target a structure and/or a process inside a bacterial cell so antibiotics could target one or many bacterial species. What type of therapeutic would target a fungi?
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