Gay bug
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Third, they can get infected with some sex disease, while not getting any benefit (transmitting their sperm to a female). This is especially important if life in general is short or if there’s a short “time slot” for mating.
This fungus infects cicadas during their underground phase or shortly after they emerge. In a recent paper published in the scientific journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, biologists Inon Scharf of Tel Aviv University and Oliver Martin of ETH Zurich tackle the “evolutionary paradox” of SSS behavior, noting that while its “costs seem obvious, positive contributions to fitness remain unclear.”
After analyzing studies that document the sex life of 110 different species of insects and arachnids, the researchers say they can find no proof that bugs practice intentional “gay” behavior.
Linking chemical exposure to changes in sexual behavior played into age-old myths that being LGBTQ+ is inherently unnatural or the result of external ‘contamination.’ Such rhetoric not only drastically misrepresents the science but also perpetuates stigma, contributing to discrimination and undermining the efforts to promote understanding and acceptance of queer identities.
Respect, Not Rhetoric
The queer community’s fight for the ability to live their lives as their authentic selves without the threat of violence and discrimination is an ongoing and serious struggle, not a metaphor to be applied to insect pathology or chemical pollutants.
As the evidence mounts that same-sex sexytime is a common occurrence in the animal kingdom, scientists have come up with a variety of explanations for why going “gay” might be an evolutionarily advantageous trait, despite the fact that doing so cannot result in baby making. It could be better decide both fast and accurate, but this does not usually happen. This could indicate that the behavior occurs during stressful or isolating conditions, Scharf said, but more work is needed to confirm this idea.
And while the possibility that any sort of sexual encounter could induce pleasure in insects may seem unlikely, Scharf does not rule it out.
"I don't know if they enjoy things or not, or if they feel fear," Scharf said.
So those beetles who came from a group with greater sexual competition were less likely to show homosexual behaviour. In short, generalizations are very important in biology, even at the expense of accuracy.
What about the male bugs who are getting penetrated by another male? Sensationalized media coverage can often distort our understanding of wildlife and inadvertently perpetuate harmful stereotypes, particularly when it borrows terminology from human social context such as the queer community.
Science, Not Sci-Fi
Periodical cicadas are incredibly unique creatures, largely due to their extended—but somehow still brief—lives.
Whereas larger animals have developed more complicated homosexual motivations — like maintaining alliances, which has been found in certain primate and seagull species — insects seem to mistakenly partake in it in a hasty attempt to secure mates. One is 100 percent accurate with his mate choices (he chooses only females), but the other does some mistakes but is faster.
It uses up resources such as water, energy and time. But our conclusions cannot be generalised to explain the behaviour of animals with more complex cognitive function and social structures like birds and mammals, which probably have very different reasons for same-sex mating.
The Buzz on Cicadas: Sexuality and Sensationalism
Every several years, something remarkable happens in parts of the United States: billions of cicadas emerge from the earth in a natural spectacle, bringing the sky to life with hordes of buzzing, breeding insects.
In other cases, males and females look so similar to one another that males cannot tell if a potential mate is a female until he mounts "her" and prepares for the act, Scharf said.
Sometimes, such extreme indiscrimination leads to mating with inanimate objects, as has been observed in beetles trying to mount glass bottles.
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By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.The glass bottle "looks like a huge female to them," Scharf said.
Scientists have seen the same phenomenon in bugs in the wild, too. Male butterflies, moths and wasps, for example, use same-sex encounters to distract competitors from potential female mates. This makes sense because males who aren’t as good at recognising potential mates in a group with more competition are less likely to pass on their genes.
On the other hand, female-female homosexuality appears to have a separate set of motivations, and deserves a whole separate analysis, Scharf said.
They also begin to mimic the mating signals of females by flicking their wings in a way typically used to attract males.
Yet despite this, homosexuality in insects – which carries all of the risks of sex without the evolutionary benefit of passing on genes – has been seen in more than 100 species. The beetles from the female-biased group weren’t picky, spending equal time trying to mate with the male as with the female.
Sometimes fast decisions are much more helpful than slow though accurate decisions. It could also improve heterosexual performance by keeping the ejaculate primed with fresh, younger sperm, or help males practise courtship to improve sexual performance. To my knowledge, this is also the first time long-term experimental evolution has been used to study the paradox of same-sex behaviour in insects.
The results also suggest that the ability to recognise mates may require a costly amount of energy, otherwise the males in the female-biased group wouldn’t have shed this ability once they were faced with less competition and so had less need of it.
It’s also worth noting that our results were relevant to flour beetles specifically and probably to invertebrates generally.