Stink bugs cultivate fungal gardens on their legs to defend against parasitic wasps

Female stink bugs have a strange organ that they use to cultivate a fungal garden, which helps protect their eggs from a type of parasitic wasp.

Takanori Nishino and his colleagues at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba discovered the organ while studying the hind limbs of animals. Megimenum gracilicorneis a stink bug known to parasitize cultivated cucumbers and pumpkins.

Researchers were looking into how…