Mating activity of Pyrrhocoris apterus (Heteroptera: Pyrrhocoridae) in nature

Title:

Mating activity of Pyrrhocoris apterus (Heteroptera: Pyrrhocoridae) in nature

Creator:

Honěk, Alois , Martinková, Zdenka , and Brabec, Marek

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:b76c134d-8a62-4bd9-b4b5-cd6ca8846c35
uuid:b76c134d-8a62-4bd9-b4b5-cd6ca8846c35
doi:10.14411/eje.2019.020

Subject:

Heteroptera, Pyrrhocoridae, Pyrrhocoris apterus, firebug, behaviour, copulation, daily changes, seasonal changes, and sperm depletion

Type:

model:article and TEXT

Format:

počítač and online zdroj

Description:

The mating behaviour of Pyrrhocoris apterus in the laboratory is well studied, but little is known about it under natural conditions. In natural populations in Central Europe, overwintered adults start copulating in March and continue until their death. Caged females, kept under natural conditions in the permanent presence of males, copulated repeatedly. Their mating activity increased sharply until early April, then very slowly until the end of June and then declined as the females die-off. Half of copulations were short (< 5 h) and only 9% were longer than 1 day. By contrast, in natural populations, mating activity (percentage of individuals involved in copula) reached its maximum in April and then decreased until early July, when the overwintered adults die. The decline in mating frequency (percentage of adults involved in copula) was associated with a decrease in the availability of receptive females towards the end of the mating period. For a female, repeated copulation is necessary because sperm is nearly depleted after insemination of 3-5 egg batches.

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
policy:public

Coverage:

187-193

Source:

European Journal of Entomology | 2019 Volume:116 | Number:1

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false