Chivalry lives among crickets, surprising study finds
October 10, 2011 1:32PM
Updated: October 10, 2011 8:45PM
Sir Walter Raleigh would be proud of England’s male field crickets, who’ve startled evoluntionary biologists by displaying chivalry. Despite the added risk of ending up as bird food, the gallant bugs give their mates priority in crawling into safe burrows when predators come hunting for them, a new finding that’s a first among insects.
“The consequences of this chivalrous behavior are the same for men and crickets: Both can get more matings and increase their paternity,” says Roland Rodriquez-Munoz of the University of Exeter, lead author of the study reported int he journal Current Biology.
Essentially, the male bugs appear to trade the risk of being eaten against the benefits of mating more with the females, in exchange for being second into the burrow. Overall, mated males were 3.9 times more likely to be eaten than unpaired ones, while mated females faced 5.6 times smaller odds of ending up in a bird’s beak. The males still scrap with intruding male crickets but make no efforts to control their mate’s movements. The females paired with a male survive longer as a result, on average, than a single female.
Gannett News Service
© 2012 Sun-Times Media, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or distributed without permission. For more information about reprints and permissions, visit
www.suntimesreprints.com. To order a reprint of this article,
click here.
Comments Click here to view or make a comment