Gay bug
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Some species, like bush crickets, can ejaculate as much as a quarter of their body weight. By framing the scientific discussion around chemicals affecting frog sexuality in such charged terms, the narrative fed into harmful stereotypes about the LGBTQ+ community. If it gave insects an evolutionary advantage then we’d expect it to become more common in this situation.
Instead, our research adds to the weight of evidence suggesting insect homosexuality is the result of poor mate-spotting abilities, although we still don’t know exactly why this occurs.
It could even potentially fertilise females indirectly by loading sperm onto male rivals who unwittingly transfer it in subsequent matings.
On the other hand, homosexual behaviour in insects may provide no evolutionary advantage and instead be due to confusion caused by environmental factors (as when fruit flies consume alcohol in rotting fruit).
But my colleagues and I have produced new evidence that supports the idea that male insects that mate with other males are simply making a mistake.
There are dozens of ideas used to explain homosexual behaviour in insects, which broadly fall into two categories. "They have some stress hormones — and they sense it — but whether you can define this as fear, pleasure or pain is very difficult to say."
The team next hopes to conduct experimental studies on a species of beetle to determine how homosexual behavior affects different aspects of the animal's life, and whether the behavior is linked to any other specific types of behaviors.
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Don’t many of the insects mentioned in the various studies have vastly different anatomies and behaviors? Both behaviors benefit the fungus by increasing interactions with other cicadas, therefore more quickly spreading the disease.
Sensationalism, Not Sexuality
While the biology of this fungus is indeed fascinating, the way it’s presented in media often distorts its interpretation.
This means any traits consistently displayed across the generations by males in this group should represent an evolutionary advantage.
In our experiment, we placed males from each group in an arena and gave them the choice of mating with a male or a female.
The males in the male-biased group had more competition so any that successfully fertilised a female should be better at mating. It could be better decide both fast and accurate, but this does not usually happen. The research actually demonstrated that atrazine, a commonly used herbicide, could disrupt endocrine function in frogs, causing male frogs to develop female-like characteristics and even produce eggs.
So those beetles who came from a group with greater sexual competition were less likely to show homosexual behaviour. 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.
This could be also the case here. 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.
Rather it is the result of a simple calculation: “The cost of rejecting a valid opportunity to mate with a female is greater than that of mistakenly mating with a male.”
I spoke to Inon Scharf over email about bug libido, comparative zoology, and how much it sucks to be a mistaken object of affection.
VICE: Why wouldn’t insects have evolved a better sense for telling the sexes apart?
A chalky white substance replaces the back third of their abdomen, including their reproductive organs, which are effectively lost to the infection.
The fungus produces compounds that also alter the host’s normal behaviors. 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.
This is especially true when the rhetoric links queer identities with notions of disease, infection, and abnormality—themes that have historically been used to stigmatize, marginalize, and ‘justify’ real physical and emotional violence against the community.
You may remember this example: media personality Alex Jones once famously claimed that chemicals in the water were “turning the friggin’ frogs gay.” This assertion was a gross misinterpretation of a 2010 study from the University of California, Berkeley.
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.
They haven’t evolved the sense to tell the difference between a viable mate and some dude who’s been recently dosed by female pheromones, or a female that’s a different species altogether, or even inanimate objects (the lusty Australian jewel beetle has been known to copulate with alluring brown beer bottles).
This “fuck anything that moves” (or doesn’t move) tactic, say Scharf and Martin, is useful because the more insects do it, regardless of who they do it with, the more likely it is that they will spread their genetic material to the greatest number of fertile females.
Such descriptions anthropomorphize the insects and misrepresent what is actually happening: a parasitic infection, not a change in identity.
It’s crucial to recognize that terms expressing human sexual orientation and identity carry significant cultural weight. 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?
To assess the range of evolutionary explanations for same-sex intercourse in the invertebrate world, a team of biologists from Tel Aviv University in Israel and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland examined roughly 100 existing studies on the topic and compiled the first comprehensive review of homosexuality in invertebrates.