FIG 6.

The life cycle of Basidiobolus ranarum. (A) The life cycle starts when sticky conidia are forcibly ejected from sporangiophores. (B) The sticky primary conidium could attach to a passing host (humans or insects) or develop an elongated adhesive conidium (capilloconidium), which also can attach to passing hosts. (C) The latter secondary elongated structure could develop to contain a sticky beak haptor that divides to form numerous “Palmella” endospores, some of which are released outside the broken capilloconidium cell wall, giving rise to new hyphae and single sporangiophores (A). (D and E) The target insects (D) can be ingested by reptiles or amphibians (E), initiating a new cycle inside the intestinal tract of these animals. (F) In this new environment, hundreds of resistant meristospores are produced and then secreted in feces. When environmental conditions are right, coenocytic hyphae are developed (G). (H) If two opposite-sex hyphae contact each other, their exchange of genetic material leads to the formation of sexual zygospores (see also Fig. 7). Zygospores can develop into sporangiophores (long arrow).