For many insects, their “ears” are not located near their head. Crickets have developed organs on their front legs that allow them to detect sounds. Meanwhile, moths, mantises, and cicadas gather auditory information from similar appendages on their thorax or abdomen. For years, entomologists assumed that the organs of some stink bug legs must function in the same way. However, new research proves that the truth is more complex and frightening.
Detailed in a study published October 16 in the journal Sciencecollaborating biologists at several Japanese universities show that females of a subset of about 100 species of stink bugs known as Dinidorids do not have tympanal organs –– the name for an insect’s hearing system. Instead, they possess a “previously unknown type of symbiotic organ” that is integral to their reproductive process. Instead of a membrane-like surface seen in other insects, the leg organ is composed of a waxy covering dotted with several thousand pores connected to porous glands. During their life, these bedbugs selectively acquire a benign form, Cordyceps-a related fungus that attaches to and grows from these pores on their legs. When it’s finally time for the next generation of insects to arrive, stink bugs encase their eggs in a web of growing fungus harvested from their leg organs.
This bizarre process has a purpose beyond giving you goosebumps. Like many other insects, stink bugs are a favorite target of parasitic wasps. The fungi act like armor, preventing female wasps from laying their own offspring in stink bug eggs, according to the team’s laboratory experiments. . In subsequent trials in which the fungus was removed, the wasps fed on the stink bugs more frequently. At the same time, the fungus never infects the wasps themselves, which means that the protection it gives to the bedbugs is purely mechanical and does not resemble a contagious virus.
“The previous interpretation that the female-specific hindlimb organ might be a tympanal ear was based simply on a superficial morphological resemblance,” the study authors explained in a statement accompanying the study.
The team also describes the unique partnership between the insect and the fungus as an “impressive example of how novel evolutionary traits for microbial symbiosis emerge,” particularly one that encompasses numerous molecular, morphological, cellular, and behavioral traits.
Fungus-carrying bedbugs live primarily in Asia and North Africa, but it’s completely understandable if you live elsewhere and suddenly feel the need to take a shower. Just because it’s a natural wonder doesn’t make it any less nightmarish. In the meantime, DinidoridsRelatives of are wreaking havoc elsewhere. Across North America, the invasive brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys) costs billions of dollars in agricultural damage each year. This is when it does not generate its pungent, defensive namesake from its own glands.
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