All Posts Tagged With: "Casanovas"
Some male wasps build harems of females
SFU researchers use high-speed cameras to observe mating
Parasitic wasp (United States Department of Agriculture via Wikimedia Commons)
Biologists have discovered that a species of fast-flying male wasp uses some smooth moves to build harems of female lovers.
A team of biologists from Simon Fraser University used high-speed cameras to record and observe the mating rituals of the tiny parasitic wasps, Ooencyrtus kuvanae.
Lead researcher Kelly Ablard says the female wasps emerge from their eggs sexually mature and looking for love. Lusty little buzzers are at the ready.
Female wasps mate just once in their four- to six-week lifetimes, Ablard says, and so it is that the wasps’ mating ritual bares a striking resemblance to a nightclub at midnight.
“Females of this species only mate once and they mate when they emerge… and the males at this point only really have one opportunity to get a female and mate with her,” says Ablard, whose research appears in the latest edition of the journal Behavioural Processes.
