Dracula orchids tempt flies by masquerading as mushrooms. Goblin
spiders lurk unseen in the world's leaf litter. The natural
world is often just as haunting as the macabre costumes worn on
city streets, as highlighted by two studies published this year
by curators in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the
American Museum of Natural History, David Grimaldi and Norman
Platnick. According to Grimaldi and colleagues, fruit flies
(Drosophilidae) of the genus Zygothrica typically swarm on
mushrooms and other rain forest fungi. But one group of orchids
in the American tropics takes advantage of their preferences,
duping the hapless flies into pollinating them with the scent
and appearance of mushrooms. These orchids are from the genus
Dracula, named so to keep the spirit of a former name,
Masdevallia, when it was realized that there were separate
orchid groups. "Over 200 years ago, botanists on major Spanish
expeditions to Peru named a new orchid Masdevallia because of
the flower's similarity to monsterly creat