Arthro-Pod EP 156: Nuptial Gifts, the Packages of Love

 

Hello lovers of bugs, as well as bugs who are in love! In today's episode, we take a journey through the world of nuptial gifts within the arthropods and find out why sometimes it is best to wrap a gift before trying to go on a date. Tune in to learn the basics of why nuptial gifts exist and how they can help facilitate the mating process and generation of the next generation. This one is a bit "spicy" so if you listen with kids, prepare for some biological talk!

Crickets preparing to mate after the exchange of a nuptial gifts (Photo by Biz Turnell, via https://entomologytoday.org/2020/02/14/nuptial-gifts-romantic-gestures-bug-insect-arthropod-world-valentines-day/)

Show notes

Insect (Order, Family)

Nuptial Gift

Purpose

Dung beetles (O: Coleoptera, F: Scarabaeidae)

Food in the form of a dung ball

https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/21/2/424/323090

Part of courtship display, dung ball is used for food source to help her and the offspring

Fireflies (O: Coleoptera, F: Lampyridae) some species

Spermatophore contains sperm and nutrients

https://now.tufts.edu/2016/12/22/firefly-gift-giving-composition-nuptial-gifts-revealed

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P8vKghAoh8

 

To obtain nutrients and fertilization occurs this way

Giant water bug (O: Hemiptera, M: Belostomatidae)

Small aquatic animals as prey (fish)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eth.12416

Part of the courtship ritual, males carry the eggs

Aphids (O: Hemiptera, F: Aphididae)

“mating drop” droplet of nutrient-rich fluid

To obtain nutrients essential for reproduction

Crickets (O: Orthopera, F:

Laupala cerasina

Several nuptial gifts before transferring genetic material

https://www.mpg.de/9686444/nuptial-feeding-female-crickets

 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-019-2705-9

Nuptial gifts improve the amount of genetic material successfully transferred from the final spermatophore to the female

Long-tailed dance flies (O: Diptera, F:

Rhamphomyia longicauda

Nutrients

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23734479

Females do not hunt so they relay on the nuptial gifts. They fill their abdomens with air to look like their eggs are more mature so males will seek them out

Imported cabbagworm butterflies (O: Lepidoptera, F:

Nitrogen

https://www.thegraphicleader.com/opinion/columnists/the-changing-rules-of-romance-for-the-cabbage-white-butterfly

 

Scorpion flies (O: Mecoptera, F: Panorpidae)

Dead prey item

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4536380

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22830480-100-heres-my-nuptial-gift-a-dead-planthopper-now-can-we-mate/

 

To appease the female and increase chances of successful mating

Questions? Comments? 

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