Perpetual hangover…
You probably wouldn’t enjoy a home made of alcohol-soaked wood. But for ambrosia beetles, it doesn’t get any better. These insects make a living by growing fungal “gardens” in dead, dying, or stressed trees. When trees are stressed, for instance by drought or flood, the plants produce ethanol as a chemical byproduct—which serves as a cue to these fungus-farming beetles that the plant might be ripe for invasion. The insects first excavate networks of tunnels and galleries within these sick trees, often killing the host plant if it’s not dead already. Inside the tunnel walls, they plant fungal spores carried within their bodies and tend to the fungi, their sole source of food…
