This is an automated machine translation of an article published by Business Insider in a different language. Machine translations can generate errors or inaccuracies; we will continue the work to improve these translations. You can find the original version here.
When talking about the praying mantis, present almost everywhere in the world, the first thing that comes to mind is the image of a female devouring the male's head, during and after mating.
This usually happens because the female has a larger wingspan than her mate. Moreover, not everything is as gray as it seems, as some studies have observed that feeding conspecifics - animals belonging to the same species - causes positive changes in the female's body.
This was shown by a study, published in the journal The American Naturalist. The study, which used the mosquitofish, was aimed at demonstrating that the ingestion of conspecifics gives nutritional advantages to the cannibal, with greater growth or reproduction.
Now, new research, published in Ethology, has taken a close look at pairs of wood cockroaches, a species that inhabits the pine forests of the southeastern United States and generally lives under the bark of dead trees.
In this way, the researchers were able to observe that, when the postcoital moment arrived, both sexes began to bite each other's wings, reciprocally and in turn, something unusual in the animal kingdom.
7 insect bites that indicate you should see a doctor
Even so, this was observed in a controlled laboratory, although the researchers assured that it would be repeated in nature. In that case, it would be one of the few monogamous relationships - in the sense of mutual and equal benefit - that occur in different life forms.
However, the researchers also underpinned the concept and asserted that if the wood cockroach practices mutual cannibalism, it is because it increases the survival of its mate, who will be better able to protect the young.
In this sense, the wings they devour are probably not so useful, since they spend most of their life in a rotten log and these can be very vulnerable to mites, infections, and, of course, to the cannibalism of another partner.
Despite the significance it may have for wood cockroaches, mutual cannibalism does not occur in nature and these insects have surprised researchers with this reciprocity.
Mutual cannibalism is a unique event.
Many examples of cannibalism in nature are known, particularly cannibalism related to sexual intercourse. The best known is the case of the praying mantis, but there are a few more.
Sexual cannibalism usually occurs when the female is larger than the male. This is what happens with the black widow -Latrodectusmatans-, which weighs 30 times more than its mate, who will be the food that strengthens the female and favors a calm laying.
In contrast, one of the black widow's cousins, the wolf spider -Hognahelluo-thinks twice before devouring the male, as some can be quite corpulent.
In addition, some arachnid males capture the female between silk threads, which makes the female's cannibalistic act more difficult and allows the male to escape from the lethal embrace and continue his life normally.
This is why the mutual cannibalism displayed by wood cockroaches constitutes a unique occurrence in nature since reciprocal feeding does not appear in any other species.
Even so, this cannibalism has only been observed in insects and remains a very rare act.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/2NGBFSw
No comments:
Post a Comment