Total Bastard Thursday: Insect Destroyer Fungus

It’s getting to the end of Thursday or Total Bastard Thursday as I like to sometimes call it. But no worries, this could just as easily fit into WTF Wednesday because that’s what I was saying when I first spotted this fly. As New South Wales hovers on the brink of a lockdown again, I needed a reminder that good things can happen when we hunker down. I actually found this … thing … last year during our ‘first’ year of Covid when we were just starting to see the silver lining of hanging around at home more. The fact is, the more time I’m spending at home, just chilling on the deck, the more interesting things I’m finding. It’s a win win for me, I don’t have to go out and deal with people but I can keep working, surrounded by dogs and where the coffee is delicious and nearby ie my kitchen

Anyway, when I first spotted this fly, it just looked like a nice fat, kind of pink stripey critter and was sitting vertically, half way up a garden ornament. I did that thing where I wonder if I should bother running inside for the camera and risk the little bit of time I probably have before the critter flies/runs/hides. But I hedged my bets, watched for a minute or two and then bolted through the back door hoping that I would be able to get a photo or two. I got down onto hands and knees and snapped a couple of shots and down there, on all fours, face to face with this fly I noticed something odd: it wasn’t scared of me in the slightest.

In fact, it wasn’t moving at all. And as it sat frozen, I noticed that its proboscis was touching the copper of the ornament. Strange. I stood up, taking the fly with me and as I zoomed in for a closer shot I noticed that it was covered in what looked like loads of salt-like crystals, cue the WTF that I mentioned earlier. Thanks to the clever people of the internet I found out that what I was looking at wasn’t actually a species of pink fly but a contender for Total Bastard Thursday and this time it’s a fungus!!!

This poor fly had had the misfortune a few days earlier of having a spore of the aptly named Insect Destroyer Fungus land on it and penetrate its exoskeleton. Once inside the fly, the fungus takes over the insect consuming the blood-like fluid, the fat cells and eventually taking over its brain and turning the fly essentially into a zombie. The fly is then persuaded to climb upwards, to stick out its proboscis which is then glued to the surface that it is on.

In its final moments, the fungus causes the fly to arch its body up and extend its wings, the perfect position to assist the spores of the fungus which by this point is now growing up and out of the body (giving that fluffy, crystal covered look), to be shot out and into the wind where it can fall on another unsuspecting fly. What a total bastard!

Fly infected with Insect Destroyer FungusNorthern Illawarra