Unattractive females use beautiful as bait
Female moths that did not enjoy success with the opposite sex, increase their chances of mating, and releasing sex pheromones close to attractive females. Insects use these special volatile substances for the transmission of signals by chemical means.
An article with the results published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Biologists from the University of North Carolina and the University of Amsterdam investigated the sexual transmission of signals in moths are diverse groups of insects with well-known sex pheromones. Using as experiments in a laboratory tube, and observe the nature, scientists have found that the chances of mating females with less “attractive” mixture of pheromones is close to zero, if they are trying to attract a partner. However, if you close them there is an attractive female, they were able to find a male only 17% of cases.
“We suspect that this is due to the “mistakes” of males when navigating to this goal is an attractive female,” says co-author with Coby Shawl. At the same time charming females has also been found advantageous to coexist with unlikable: in this situation, it was able to mate faster than alone or in the company of other attractive females.
“This behavioral strategy sputnikfest in the scientific literature are always described as male, however in our case, they are used females, explains Shawl. — Strategies audible and visual sputnikfest was already known before, however, in our work we describe a new type of olfactory”.