As with my previous two posts—“Hidden Gems in the Beatty Collection”, and its originally titled successor, “Hidden Spoons in the Beatty Collection” —this post pays homage to yet another specimen in the Frost’s collection whose uniqueness is deserving of some special attention. This post also serves as the first (or third, depending on how you look at it) in a series, dedicated to exposing some of the museum’s more exotic and bizarre specimens, called “Cool Frass at the Frost”.
Mantises have been one of my favorite orders of insects since I developed object permanence, so I was overly enthused to work with the residents of our collection. As I scanned the unit trays, one specimen stood out from the rows of its pinned, praying neighbors. Twisting from the specimen’s abdomen was a long reddish-brown coil. Suddenly, memories of several horrific entomological YouTube videos flooded my mind, one of which can be viewed here.
After rewatching those videos and having the strange craving for shoestring licorice, we determined the coil was a Nematomorpha, a parasite commonly referred to as the horsehair or Gordian worm. The larvae of these parasites infect arthropods and develop within the haemocoel (Hanelt et al. 2005). Once fully mature, the worm hijacks its host’s nervous system, driving the insect to seek water and drown itself. The adult parasite slithers free through their host’s anus and then mate in the aquatic environment, completing their life cycle (Thomas, et al. 2002).
Have a closer look.
If this post wasn’t already macabre enough, the possible implication of our specimen will ensure it is. Because horsehair worms tend to evacuate their host only in the presence of water, it seems as though our specimen’s squatter tried to flee its desiccating shelter, only to be trapped and preserved itself. Through entomology, the Nematomorpha’s home also became its tomb, and left us with this amazing display of parasiticism.
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