Valentine's Day is next week, so it's a good time to look at insect relationships - or their absence. The relations between male and female insects vary as much as insect groups do.
In most cases, there is no relationship except a brief courtship lasting a few moments, the mating act and the laying of eggs. There is usually no relationship with the young, either.
For much of the year, female aphids reproduce with no assistance from males. They simply give live birth to more females. At the end of the season, they produce males, mate and lay eggs.
In the case of silverfish, there isn't even any contact between males and females. The male produces a case called a spermatophore with sperm inside and leaves it on the ground for a female to find and pick up.
With butterflies and moths, the female calls males by releasing pheromone scents into the wind. The scent can carry for miles, and males may or may not catch the scent and find her.
In the case of singing insects such as crickets, it is the male who is calling with his song. He stays in one place and waits for females to find him. Some crickets sing together in large groups called choruses, which makes it easy for females to fly into the group and find mates.
Both male and female fireflies signal with light flashes distinctive to their species. In this case, the females stay in one place and flash while the males fly around and flash back when they spot a female of their species.
Everyone has probably heard that the female praying mantis kills the male during the mating act by biting off his head, then eats him. This is only true if she is very hungry and he can't get away fast enough. This often happened in captivity, so people thought it was normal behavior. Actually, male mantises have some display moves that tell the female they are mates, not dinner.
Male dragonflies set up territories around bodies of water. They patrol them and keep other males away, and a male mates with any female in his territory. The male picks the female up and carries her over the water. He dips her down so she can lay the eggs he has just fertilized. This prevents any other male from getting to her before she lays the eggs.
Some female insects such as queen ants and bees have long lives and will be laying eggs for years. These females have sperm storage organs where the sperm from one mating flight is kept and doled out a little at a time to fertilize each batch of eggs.
A queen honey bee will have one mating flight in her life, but on that flight she may mate with several different males. The unfortunate males do not have a similar opportunity because their reproductive systems are ripped out in the mating act and left attached to the queen, and of course, they die.
Life is better for the termite male. He becomes the king and lives in the nest with the queen.
A few insects do have real relationships. Two such insects are beetles that may make you say "Yuck!" They are the dung beetle and the burying beetle. Male and female dung beetles work together to roll up balls of manure and bury it for their larvae to eat.
Male and female burying beetles work together, burrowing under a small dead animal to sink it into the ground, then cover it with soil. The female lays eggs on the dead animal, and when the eggs hatch, both parents feed and care for their larvae.
The common carpenter bees that you see drilling holes in wood live in mated pairs. The female does the work of construction while the male guards the nest against predators and parasites. Some of the mud dauber wasps have this same arrangement.
What are your arrangements with your Valentine?
- Send your insect questions to Claire Stuart by email at firstname.lastname@example.org or write her (with self-addressed stamped envelope) in care of Living Section, The Journal, 207 W. King Street, Martinsburg, WV 25401.