People using sugar in cockroach traps has led to female roaches being turned off by the sugary “gifts” males use to entice them into mating.
However, the demise of cockroaches cannot be celebrated, as some males have adapted new ways to continue wooing females, including by shortening the length of foreplay, a study said yesterday.
The small but stubborn German cockroach is the most common species of the insect, lurking in kitchens and bathrooms around the world.
Glucose, a form of sugar, has long been used to bait cockroaches into deadly traps.
However, 30 years ago, researchers first noticed that some German cockroaches had developed an aversion to glucose and were avoiding the traps.
This distaste for glucose might save them from death, but it has also put a damper on their sex life, said the study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Male cockroaches have a particular maneuver to attract females into mating.
They lift their wings and expose a special gland that secretes a “nuptial gift,” a cocktail that includes the sugar maltose.
The female jumps on the male’s back to lap up the treat, which keeps her occupied “long enough for the male to extend his abdomen under the female and engage her genitalia,” the study said.
However, the saliva of the females quickly converts the maltose into glucose.
Females who have developed an aversion to glucose jump off “before the male can grasp the female genitalia,” potentially affecting the future reproduction of the species, the study said.
However, male cockroaches, which have also developed an aversion to glucose, can now get around the problem.
The males have changed the composition of their nuptial gift, slashing the glucose content and more than doubling the amount of maltotriose. This sugar is popular with females and converts into glucose much more slowly than maltose. The males also shortened the courtship process, allowing less times for the glucose conversion to take place. Glucose-averse males start mating in an average of 2.2 seconds — almost twice the speed of other cockroaches, the study said.
The big losers are ordinary male cockroaches, who now secrete a gift too rich in glucose and take too long to start mating for the taste of many females, it said.
The authors of the study from North Carolina State University said that it was important to understand glucose aversion in cockroaches to develop new ways to control their numbers.
Some scientists have recommended that glucose no longer be used in cockroach traps.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS