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How tight are beetle hugs? Attachment in mating leaf beetles

Similar to other leaf beetles, rosemary beetles Chrysolina americana exhibit a distinct sexual dimorphism in tarsal attachment setae. Setal discoid terminals occur only in males, and they have been previously associated with a long-term attachment to the female's back (elytra) during copulation...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Voigt, Dagmar, Tsipenyuk, Alexey, Varenberg, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society Publishing 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5627132/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28989792
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171108
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author Voigt, Dagmar
Tsipenyuk, Alexey
Varenberg, Michael
author_facet Voigt, Dagmar
Tsipenyuk, Alexey
Varenberg, Michael
author_sort Voigt, Dagmar
collection PubMed
description Similar to other leaf beetles, rosemary beetles Chrysolina americana exhibit a distinct sexual dimorphism in tarsal attachment setae. Setal discoid terminals occur only in males, and they have been previously associated with a long-term attachment to the female's back (elytra) during copulation and mate guarding. For the first time, we studied living males and females holding to female's elytra. Pull-off force measurements with a custom-made tribometer featuring a self-aligning sample holder confirmed stronger attachment to female elytra compared with glass in both males and females; corresponding to 45 and 30 times the body weight, respectively. In line with previous studies, males generated significantly higher forces than females on convex elytra and flat glass, 1.2 times and 6.8 times, respectively. Convex substrates like elytra seem to improve the attachment ability of rosemary beetles, because they can hold more strongly due to favourable shear angles of legs, tarsi and adhesive setae. A self-aligning sample holder is found to be suitable for running force measurement tests with living biological samples.
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spelling pubmed-56271322017-10-08 How tight are beetle hugs? Attachment in mating leaf beetles Voigt, Dagmar Tsipenyuk, Alexey Varenberg, Michael R Soc Open Sci Biology (Whole Organism) Similar to other leaf beetles, rosemary beetles Chrysolina americana exhibit a distinct sexual dimorphism in tarsal attachment setae. Setal discoid terminals occur only in males, and they have been previously associated with a long-term attachment to the female's back (elytra) during copulation and mate guarding. For the first time, we studied living males and females holding to female's elytra. Pull-off force measurements with a custom-made tribometer featuring a self-aligning sample holder confirmed stronger attachment to female elytra compared with glass in both males and females; corresponding to 45 and 30 times the body weight, respectively. In line with previous studies, males generated significantly higher forces than females on convex elytra and flat glass, 1.2 times and 6.8 times, respectively. Convex substrates like elytra seem to improve the attachment ability of rosemary beetles, because they can hold more strongly due to favourable shear angles of legs, tarsi and adhesive setae. A self-aligning sample holder is found to be suitable for running force measurement tests with living biological samples. The Royal Society Publishing 2017-09-13 /pmc/articles/PMC5627132/ /pubmed/28989792 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171108 Text en © 2017 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Biology (Whole Organism)
Voigt, Dagmar
Tsipenyuk, Alexey
Varenberg, Michael
How tight are beetle hugs? Attachment in mating leaf beetles
title How tight are beetle hugs? Attachment in mating leaf beetles
title_full How tight are beetle hugs? Attachment in mating leaf beetles
title_fullStr How tight are beetle hugs? Attachment in mating leaf beetles
title_full_unstemmed How tight are beetle hugs? Attachment in mating leaf beetles
title_short How tight are beetle hugs? Attachment in mating leaf beetles
title_sort how tight are beetle hugs? attachment in mating leaf beetles
topic Biology (Whole Organism)
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5627132/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28989792
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171108
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