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Frisky beetles revealed to mate every 48 hours in new study
A new piece of research has landed scientists with more unanswered questions after they looked into the beetle that mates every 48 hours.�
The world is full of strange and wonderful things, many of which humans have only begun to explore. For instance, where do eels mate, can animals feel grief, and what did dinosaurs sound like? Now, scientists have another question on their list: Why do black chafer beetles operate on a completely different circadian rhythm?
Introducing the very frisky beetle�
The large black chafer beetle (Holotrichia parallela) is a well-known agricultural pest throughout much of Asia. While the species is well-documented, research teams recently uncovered a behaviour that sets it apart from most other living things on Earth.
The team was led by Walter Leal, from the University of California-Davis, and Beijing-based scientist Jiao Yin. Their findings were recently published in the Current Biology journal.
Through the observation of female beetles, Leal and his team understood that they arose from their burrows every other night to spread pheromones. It was basically the beetle equivalent of lighting a candle and playing some saucy music.
From this, they looked at whether the male beetles operated on the same 48-hour period. Through some complicated lab work, researchers identified a receptor gene, HparOR14, which was responsive to the females pheromone, L-isoleucine methyl ester (LIME).�
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During nights when the female beetles were active, the HparOR14 was more responsive and showed increased activity. On their off nights, the team observed a dramatic decrease in activity.
But what does this mean
Essentially, the lack of response during the off nights showed that the male beetles reception operated on the same 48-hour cycle as the pheromone release.
Unfortunately, the realisation has only left researchers with further questions and they now hope to understand why the beetles work on a completely different cycle to other living things.
Twenty-four hour rhythms in physiology and behavior are commonly observed in organisms from bacteria to humans, but observations of 48-hour rhythms in nature are rare, explained US Davis Joanna Chiu. This elegant study by Professor Leal and his collaborators has provided us with an in-depth description of how the circabidian rhythm of pheromone detection in this beetle is generated.
