Dr. Carolyn Elya on highjacking zombie fungi

Arianna and Gabrielle interview Dr. Carolyn Elya on how microbes hijack insect nervous systems to control them. Dr. Elya studies a fungus that infects fruit flies, invading their nervous system and eating them from the inside out. The fungus controls the fly nervous system to climb to a high point in the forest in order to better spread the fungus spores to infect new flies and insects. We speak to Dr. Elya about the complex relationships of the organisms and the impact of climate change on the forest ecosystems. 

Dr. Elya is a postdoc at Harvard University, a was a researcher at HHMI, she received a Ph.D from the Molecular and Cell Biology department at UC Berkeley in May 2017.