A parasitic fungus that controls the behaviour of fruit flies has, for the first time, been studied in the lab. In a fascinating preprint posted on Biorxiv, researchers Carolyn Elya et al. report how they discovered the pathogen in the wild near Berkeley, California. The fungus belongs to the species Entomophthora muscae, which is already known to prey on various species of wild flies. But Elya et al. found a way to infect laboratory flies with the disease, thus allowing them to study the fungus in unprecedented detail. Elya et al. first noticed the Berkeley strain of Entomophthora while doing field-work for an unrelated fly experiment:
In late July 2015, we noticed that several flies had died with raised wings at the bottom of [a pan filled with fruit] and, upon closer inspection, observed remnants of fungal growth and sporulation on these dead flies.
