14 DAY TRIAL // Hollywood might have people believing that rain is by far the most suitable décor for romance, but insects are not buying this illusion.
Thus, a paper published in yesterday's issue of the scientific journal PLOS ONE explains that three unrelated insect species, i.e. the cucurbit beetle, the true armyworm moth and the potato aphid, often refuse to mate when atmospheric pressure drops below a certain point.
Otherwise put, the anticipation of rain causes these insects to display drastic changes in their mating behavior.
In their study, the researchers who worked on this project detail that, whenever the atmospheric pressures the insects were exposed to plummeted, males belonging to all three species stopped being as responsive to female pheromones as they normally would have been.
Hence the fact that they did not exactly jump at the chance of mating.
Interestingly enough, the males that did respond to the females in their proximity switched from being gentle lovers to being fairly hasty ones.
As the researchers explain, they showed little interest in courting the females before attempting to mate with them.
“When researchers measured the male beetles' response to female sex pheromones under the different conditions, they found a significant decrease in pheromone response when air pressure fell compared to stable or increasing pressure.”
“Furthermore, 63% of males started copulating faster in the presence of females during dropping atmospheric pressure, a condition associated with high rains and winds. By contrast, under stable or rising air pressure conditions, all males showed full courtship behavior,” EurekAlert tells us.
In the case of females, the researchers found that the anticipation of rain caused them to stop calling for males as often and as loud as they usually did.
Specialists suspect that these insects change their behavior before storms to stay safe from powerful winds and rainfall. Thus, it appears that, at least as far as these three species are concerned, survival trumps love.