Insect Love

When delving into the world of insects, you can find some very interesting mating behavior. One example (I happily do not have a picture of) is bedbugs. They engage in "traumatic insemination". When the male finds a female, he uses a sword-like organ to stab her, (anywhere in the abdomen will do!) and releases sperm into the body cavity. You can tell how many times a female has mated by the scars on her body. Yikes. 

The damselflies pictured above are pretty tame in comparison. The male (blue) grabs the female's (gray) neck with graspers on the end of his abdomen. Then she reaches her abdomen forward to collect sperm from a spot on his abdominal, resulting in this heart shaped acrobatic embrace. When they're done the male maintains his grasp and hangs on to guard the female from other males while she lays eggs.

A fluffy new drone

And then there are honey bees. The male honey bee is called a drone. In a hive full of female workers and queen, drones are produced in larger numbers at certain times of year. Also produced at this time are virgin queens. They go out on a mating flight to mate with many males from other colonies to collect enough sperm for a lifetime of egg laying in the hive. The drones fly out to meet the queens, and high in the air we learn a new term- "explosive ejaculation". When a drone mounts a queen, his penis everts, he becomes paralyzed, and the force of ejaculation blows the end of his abdomen off! That's the end if the story for the drone. If they miss out on mating, they are tossed out of the hive by their worker sisters in the fall, since they cannot feed themselves and would be a strain on the colony for the winter. Their only purpose in life is to mate.

I was rather excited to find these hanging flies engaged with a third (dead) party, and realized what was happening. A male has found prey and brought it to a female. This is known as a "nuptial gift". She eats it while they mate. The gift provides nutrition for the female and a larger gift gives the male sufficient time to mate while the female is busy eating.

Here are some other insects mating. Happy Valentines day!