Male wasps win out by tagging females

摘要

The dating game is tough for male Ooencyrtus kuvanae wasps. Not only does each female mate only once, but the eggs of several females all hatch at once, leaving the males in a race to find mates. To see how male wasps get their girl, a team led by Gerhard Gries of Simon Fraser University in Canada looked at captive insects. One male placed with a group of females would mate with all the unmated females, they found. But when more than one male was present, some males switched to tagging females with pheromones from their antennae.