A black bean aphid is about to have a rough day. It has been targeted by a parasitic wasp, which lays several eggs inside its body. When the eggs hatch, the wasp grubs will try to eat the aphid from the inside out. If they succeed, the aphid will die, and the young wasps will burst from its corpse to find aphids of their own.

But the aphid isn’t necessarily doomed. There’s a chance that it will resist the attempt to usurp its body. If it does, the wasps will have done it a favour. When the mother wasp implanted its eggs, it also infected the aphid with bacteria that protect against parasitic wasps. It inadvertently vaccinated the aphid against its