A springbok prayer locust man looking for a hook does not have to worry about a female stealing his heart.
However, there is a very good change that she will bite off his head, and he knows it.
Indeed, 60 percent of the sexual encounters between Springboks – one of nearly 2,000 prayer locusts around the world – end up being eaten by men as a snack.
“Men play Russian roulette when they encounter cannibalistic females,” explained Nathan Burke, an entomologist at the University of Auckland and an expert on mating rituals for mantis.
All male manties show extreme caution when approaching a prospective mate. Hard to blame them.
But while most will sneak the female from behind or distract the female with a nice bite, the Springbok have a very different – and previously unannounced – strategy for staying alive, according to the findings released Wednesday. in Biology letters.
“Under the threat of cannibalistic attacks, men try to subdue women by tying them up in violent struggle,” said Burke, co-author with co-author Gregory Holwell of the study.
Female mantis wounded by wrestling with a male. (© Dr. Nathan W Burke)
Men who win the struggles of the lovers will most likely succeed in digesting the relationship, “indicating that wrestling is both a mating tactic and a survival tactic,” he added.
The key to victory, according to gladiator experiments with 52 pairs of mantises, was striking at first.
If the male pulls faster and grabs the female with his serrated raptorial forepaws, he has a 78 percent chance of escaping unscathed.
And when the male inflicted a severe but non-fatal wound on the abdomen, he held his head every time.
“I was very surprised to discover that men injure women while trying to subject mating,” Burke said. “Something like this has never been observed in mantises before.”
However, once the female grabs, males are always killed and devoured.
Sexual reproduction
In general, men came out on top more than half the time in these jousts, which lasted an average of 13 seconds.
Winning the match did not automatically lead to mating – the coupling followed only two-thirds of the time, and even then the male liquidated half the time in the female’s womb.
The bright green Springbok prayer locust, alias Miomantis caffra, is native to southern Africa, but has spread to New Zealand, southern Europe and California, probably through the pet trade.
The nutrients obtained when a female praying mantis eats her freer benefit her offspring as they grow.
Sexual cannibalism – when the female of a species devours the male during or after mating – is also known among spiders, such as the black widow, and scorpions.
Normally, smaller men do what they can to prevent being swallowed up, including playing to death.
But female Springbok mantises have another trick in their prickly sleeve: the ability to reproduce asexually, or without any help from males.
“They can produce clones of themselves if they do not mate,” Burke said.
If you have this B-relapse plan, it begs an interesting question: if females are so good at cannibalizing males and can reproduce without sex, then how do males survive?
“It motivated me to look so closely at male mating tactics,” Burke said.
He explained that sexual conflict theory tells us that men in this situation need to develop countermeasures to help them mate and stay relevant.
And sure enough, that’s what the researchers found.
“This is a fascinating example of how sexual conflict can lead to the evolution of mating tactics that help one sex but hinder the other.”
© Agence France-Press