Parasitoid Wasps May Turn Spiders into Zombies by Hacking their Internal Code

Setting off a startling chain of events, a parasitoid wasp can force a spider to weave a special web to suspend the wasp pupa just before it finishes killing its spider host. William Eberhard, staff scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Marcelo Gonzaga at the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia in Brazil have assembled wide-ranging evidence that 'zombification' involves hacking existing web-spinning mechanisms by hijacking the spider's own molting hormone, ecdysone.