Nature & Environment
First Example of Female Penis Discovered in Insect that has Sex for Up to 70 Hours
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: Apr 18, 2014 07:07 AM EDT
A little-known cave insect has called into question about what it means to be female. It turns out that this insect has a rather unusual sex life and that the female is the one with the penis rather than the male.
The cave insect is known as Neotrogla, and can be found in caves in Brazil. During copulation, which lasts between 40 to 70 hours, the female insects insert an elaborate, penis-like organ into the males' much-reduced, vagina-like opening. This sex-role reversal may have been driven by the resource-poor cave environment in which the insects live.
"Although sex-role reversal has been identified in several different animals, Neotrogla is the only example in which the intromittent organ is also reversed," said Kazunori Yoshizawa, one of the researchers, in a news release.
In all, there are four species of this cave insect; and it turns out that all of the females of these species have the penis-like structure. Named the "gynosome," this organ is inserted into males and used to receive capsules of nourishment and sperm. This coupling doesn't just take a long time, though; it also binds the male and female together firmly. In one instance, the researchers attempted to pull a male and female apart. This caused the male's abdomen to be ripped from his thorax without breaking the genital coupling.
Currently, the researchers are curious as to what evolutionary drivers led to this female sex organ. More specifically, they're interested in what makes these insects so special. The scientists plan to breed a population of the insects in the lab in order to study them a bit more closely. This could lead to further insight into not only the insects, but the process of evolution in general
"It will be important to unveil why, among many sex-role-reversed animals, only Neotrogla evolve the elaborated female penis," said Yoshitaka Kamimura, one of the researchers, in a news release.
The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.
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First Posted: Apr 18, 2014 07:07 AM EDT
A little-known cave insect has called into question about what it means to be female. It turns out that this insect has a rather unusual sex life and that the female is the one with the penis rather than the male.
The cave insect is known as Neotrogla, and can be found in caves in Brazil. During copulation, which lasts between 40 to 70 hours, the female insects insert an elaborate, penis-like organ into the males' much-reduced, vagina-like opening. This sex-role reversal may have been driven by the resource-poor cave environment in which the insects live.
"Although sex-role reversal has been identified in several different animals, Neotrogla is the only example in which the intromittent organ is also reversed," said Kazunori Yoshizawa, one of the researchers, in a news release.
In all, there are four species of this cave insect; and it turns out that all of the females of these species have the penis-like structure. Named the "gynosome," this organ is inserted into males and used to receive capsules of nourishment and sperm. This coupling doesn't just take a long time, though; it also binds the male and female together firmly. In one instance, the researchers attempted to pull a male and female apart. This caused the male's abdomen to be ripped from his thorax without breaking the genital coupling.
Currently, the researchers are curious as to what evolutionary drivers led to this female sex organ. More specifically, they're interested in what makes these insects so special. The scientists plan to breed a population of the insects in the lab in order to study them a bit more closely. This could lead to further insight into not only the insects, but the process of evolution in general
"It will be important to unveil why, among many sex-role-reversed animals, only Neotrogla evolve the elaborated female penis," said Yoshitaka Kamimura, one of the researchers, in a news release.
The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone