Male darkling beetles perform oral sex on females to increase their chances of successfully mating, study reveals
- Male darkling beetles perform oral sex on females to get consent to mate
- Females entice males by displaying their abdominal terminus upward to show interest in sexual activity
- Females will runaway if they are not satisfied with the male’s performance, suggesting oral sex is crucial to successful mating among the beetles
Male desert darkling beetles perform oral sex on females to gain consent to mate, a new study finds.
Scientists at Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science observed precopulatory oral sexual for the first time among the cryptic desert beetle Platyope mongolica (P. mongolica), an act in which the males contact the female’s genitals using their mouths.
The team, who conducted the study in Mongolia, China, identified four steps of the insect’s natural mating process: males pursuing females, oral sexual contact, mounting, and copulation.
However, if a female is not satisfied with the male’s performance, it will runaway and leave the male beetle to continue searching for a mate to mount and copulate.
Male desert darkling beetles perform oral sex on females to gain consent to mate, a new study finds. It was also found that the shorter a male spends on oral sexual contact, the longer a male spends on copulation attempts, and the more likely it is to be unsuccessful
The study was conducted with male and female beetles collected by the researchers, who observed them in a lab setting.
This allowed them to closely observe precopulatory oral sexual, which was done by males using their maxillary palpi, a sensory organ on the mouth, to rub the female’s genitals.
The team observed females entice males by displaying their abdominal terminus upward to show interest in sexual activity.
‘Females usually stop moving and prostrate their heads as they extend their abdominal terminus higher to submit to mating,’ reads the study published in Ecology and Evolution.
However, if a female is not satisfied with the male’s performance, it will runaway and leave the male beetle to continue searching for a mate to mount and copulate
‘Males search and pursue females until the females stop moving. The remarkable courtship before copulation is that males repeatedly rub their maxillary palpi on the female’s genitals before an attempt to copulate.’
A total of four of experiments were conducted to better understand if oral sex plays an important role in successful copulation.
The first experiment removed males’ antennae but kept females intact and in the second, researchers removed only the maxillary palpi of males and the females remained intact.
During the third experiment, the female’s genitals was coated with petroleum jelly and in the last portion of the study, the males and females were left intact and undisturbed.
‘Results showed that copulation duration significantly decreased after removal of males’ maxillary palpi,’ researchers wrote in the study.
‘Removal of males’ antennae did not decrease copulation duration with females.’
‘However, all the interference treatments (T1-T3) have a significant decrease in the rate of successful copulation.’
It was also found that the shorter a male spends on oral sexual contact, the longer a male spends on copulation attempts, and the more likely it is to be unsuccessful.
‘We confirm that precopulatory oral sexual contact is a form of investment for successful copulation,’ the study reads.
‘Our study adds to a new understanding of the evolutionary significance of precopulatory oral sexual behavior in insects, making substantial contributions to sexual selection and evolution.’
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