The fungus grows inside the ants and releases chemicals that affect their behaviour. Some ants leave the colony and wander off to find fresh leaves on their own, while others fall from their tree-top havens on to leaves nearer the ground.

The final stage of the parasitic death sentence is the most macabre. In their last hours, infected ants move towards the underside of the leaf they are on and lock their mandibles in a “death grip” around the central vein, immobilising themselves and locking the fungus in position.

“This can happen en masse. You can find whole graveyards with 20 or 30 ants in a square metre. Each time, they are on leaves that are a particular height off the ground and they have bitten into the main vein before dying,” said David Hughes at Harvard University.

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More than 200 varieties of mushroom were on display at the Devonian Botanic Garden on Sunday, as the Alberta Mycological Society held a unique exposition.

The goal was to showcase the various roles the fungi play in our lives, from culinary inspiration, to medicinal qualities, to preserving local ecosystems.

“They are probably the most fascinating organisms,” said Roland Treu, who studies the spore-bearing fruit at the University of Athabasca.

“They are kind of mysterious.”

With a generous fall of rain this year, a rich array of mushrooms have popped up across the province. But experts have a warning for backyard harvesters – some species are poisonous.

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North America’s most common bat, the little brown myotis, may be all but extinct in the northeastern United States in 16 years, due to a rapidly-spreading fungal infection,  according to a story in Live Science.

The fungus, called the white-nosed syndrome grows on the exposed skin of bats as they hibernate.

If infection continues at current rates, the researchers reported in the journal Science, there is a 99-percent chance the little brown myotis population will drop below 0.01 percent of its current numbers by 2026.

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The ‘jellylike fungus,’ a mushroom known as cordyceps sinensis, which grows inside the bodies of dead insect lavae.

It grows at high altitude on remote Himalayan peaks along the border areas of Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan and India and has been prized as a herbal medicine in Tibet and China since the 15th century.

Indian officials said troops from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are sneaking across the disputed MacMahon Line border.

While the fungus, which has been dubbed the ‘love flower,’ is not particularly valued in India, its value has soared in China as an aphrodisiac.

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Ordinary fungi can safely break down polycarbonate plastic — an omnipresent material that contains the worry-inducing chemical bisphenol A, or BPA.

BPA, which has been linked to a growing number of reproductive, developmental and other health issues, appears in a huge variety of plastic products, including CDs, screwdriver handles, eyeglasses frames, water bottles and toys. Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of polycarbonate plastic is produced each year.

In experiments, three types of fungi were able to break down about 5 percent of the plastic in their lab dishes over the course a year, as long as the plastic was first zapped with ultraviolet light.

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A research team led by scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech has discovered a fundamental entry mechanism that allows dangerous fungal microbes to infect plants and cause disease. The discovery paves the way for the development of new intervention strategies to protect plant, and even some animal cells, from deadly fungal infections. The findings are published in the July 23 edition of the journal Cell.

The researchers have revealed how special disease-related proteins, known as effectors, blaze a trail into cells. Fungi and fungal-like microbes known as oomycetes produce effector molecules that penetrate cells and switch off the host’s defense system. Once the host’s immune system has been disabled, the fungus or oomycete swiftly follows up, breaking and entering the cell and unleashing disease.

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A wheat-killing fungal disease, which is being called ‘agriculture’s polio’, is racing like swine flu towards Asia from Africa, crippling food baskets in seven countries. India, also at risk, has got a global breakthrough with its first line of defence — 20 varieties that can fight an attack.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Ug99 fungus is on a “wind-borne trip around the globe” and poses a “genuine risk” to global food security and could push millions into hunger.

In 2008, India formally joined global efforts to fight Ug99, led by the NY-based Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI). Within two years of research, the Karnal-based Directorate of Wheat Research, led by its head, SS Singh, isolated genes that can fend off the fungus.

The fungus is a constantly-moving one, having been blown from Uganda to Sudan and Yemen, until it reached Iran last year. Scientists think Ug99’s detection in Iran endangers Pakistan and India.”

Western scientists believe Punjab can’t be safe for long unless solid defences are put up, but Singh said India was fully prepared and secure.

The 20 resistant wheat varieties are being grown along India’s borders as a shield, resembling a fence. They have also been offered to other affected countries under an agreement with BGRI for trials.

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Basil is a commonly used to make pesto and tomato sauce and is a popular ingredient in Italian and Thai recipes. It’s also often used in salads or sprinkled on tomatoes.

Margaret McGrath, an associate professor of plant pathology at Cornell University, said the fungus is likely more of a problem for home gardeners and herb farmers who may not have access to fungicides that are available to larger commercial growers.

“We think it’s moving around each year, surviving over the winter and then moving north during the summer,” McGrath said.

The relatively recent emergence of the fungus means many growers don’t know about it, McGrath said.

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Cryptococcus gattii — an airborne fungus that can cause life-threatening illness — is an emerging infection in the Pacific Northwest, U.S. health officials said Thursday.

While C. gattii infections are rare — only 60 cases have been reported since 2004 — they can be severe and even fatal, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in the July 23 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

“C. gattii is still rare so we don’t want people to panic or to misunderstand the risk of infection, but it is serious,” said co-author Julie Harris, of CDC’s National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases.

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Plant experts at Purdue University have confirmed the presence of a damaging tomato disease in Indiana near the Kentucky  line.

The university said Thursday the scientists confirmed a case of late blight, a fungus-like disease.

The infection was found in a plant sample from a home garden in Dearborn County near Kentucky. The disease damaged tomato plants in at least 30 Indiana counties in 2009, the first outbreak of late blight since 1998.

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