insect - fungal interactions

[James/Marilyn Shea]

In article <6r4h65$dcp at news5-gui.server.cableol.net>, "Bryn"
<bjenkins at fut.net> wrote:

> I am writing a dissertation on the interactions between insects and fungus.
> (any and all interactions).
> 
> If any one has any interesting references to this subject, I would be
> grateful if they could e-mail me direct or post them at
> sci.bio.entomology.misc.
> 
> Thanks in advance
> 
> Bryn

8/17/98
Hi Bryn,
In my files, I saved a clipping from the San Francisco Chronicle (undated,
alas, but probably several years old). It concerns an article in the
journal *Nature* about a fungus that reproduces  ³by making infected
plants sprout phony flowers with long stems, bright yellow petals,
enticing aroma and sticky sweet nectar ... Flies, butterflies and bees
seem to prefer the bogus blooms to the real thing growing on plants
nearby. Instead of picking up pollen, the visiting insects fly off with a
load of male and femal sex cells from the fungus and mix them with germ
cells on similar flower-like growths on other plants.²
The researcher was Barbara A. Roy, a postdoc fellow in botany at the
University of California at Davis who discovered the ³psuedoflowers² while
doing field work at the Rocky Mountains Biologicial Lab in Gothic, CO., in
1989.
There¹s more to the article, and I¹ll e-mail it to you if you¹re interested.
Marilyn