A male Springbok prayer cloak looking for a connection does not have to worry about a woman stealing his heart.
However, there is a very good change, she will bite his head and he knows.
Indeed, 60 percent of sexual encounters between Springboks – one of nearly 2,000 mantis species worldwide – end in males being eaten as snacks.
“Men play Russian roulette whenever they meet cannibal females,” said Nathan Burke, an entomologist at the University of Auckland and an expert on mantis mating rituals.
All male mantises are extremely cautious when approaching a potential partner. It’s hard to blame them.
But while most will sneak in or distract the woman with a tasty piece, Springbok has a completely different – and previously unreported – strategy for staying alive, according to findings published Wednesday in Biology letters.
“Under the threat of a cannibalistic attack, men try to subdue women by engaging them in violent fights,” said Burke, co-author with fellow Gregory Holwell of the study.
Female mantis wounded by fighting with a male. (© Dr. Nathan W Burke)
Men who win the fight for lovers are much more likely to succeed in consuming the relationship, “which suggests that the fight is both a mating tactic and a survival tactic,” he added.
The key to victory, according to the gladiators’ experiments with 52 pairs of mantises, was striking at first.
If the male was quicker to shoot and grabbed the female with his serrated raptor forelegs, he had a 78% chance of escaping unharmed.
And when, in addition, the man caused a serious but non-fatal wound to the abdomen, he held his head every time.
“I was very surprised to find that males hurt females as they tried to subdue them for mating,” Burke said. “None of this has ever been seen in mantises.”
However, if the female grabbed first, the males were always killed and devoured.
Asexual reproduction
In general, men took the lead more than half the time in these chases, which lasted an average of 13 seconds.
Winning the match did not automatically lead to mating – the mating followed only two-thirds of the time and even then the male reached the female’s stomach half the time.
Bright green mantle Springbok, aka Miomantis caffra, is native to southern Africa, but has spread to New Zealand, southern Europe and California, probably through the pet trade.
The nutrients gained when a female mantissa eats its suitor benefits its offspring as they grow.
Sexual cannibalism – when the female of a species consumes the male during or after mating – is also known among spiders, such as the black widow and scorpions.
Usually, younger men do everything they can to avoid swallowing, including dead play.
But Springbok women’s mantises have another trick up their sleeve: the ability to reproduce asexually or without any help from men.
“I can produce clones on my own if they don’t mate,” Burke said.
With this reserve, Plan B raises an interesting question: if females are so good at cannibalizing males and can reproduce without sex, how do men continue to exist?
“That motivated me to look so closely at male mating tactics,” Burke said.
The theory of sexual conflict, he explained, tells us that men in this situation should evolve countermeasures to help them mate and remain relevant.
And that’s pretty much what the researchers found.
“It’s 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-Presse