News Release

Uncovering behavior of long-dead insects

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMC (BioMed Central)

What can you learn from the 120 year-old body of a parasitoid wasp? Using material from museum collections, researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology report that they can tell how males wasps court their females, based on dead specimens.

Parasitoid wasps are one of the most abundant groups of organisms on the planet. Their diversity makes it very hard to study behaviors across many species. Seraina Klopfstein from the Natural History Museum of Bern, Switzerland, and co-workers have shown that males of many species coil their antennae around those of their mates, either once or in a more complex double coil. This peculiar courtship behavior is determined by antennal structures that bring male antennal glands into intimate contact with the female's receptors. The coiling behavior has evolved slowly and, where lost, has never re-evolved.

The researchers amputated the antennae from specimen wasps of 56 different species and transferred them from an ethanol solution into pure water. The change in viscosity between the two liquids caused the antennae, where possible, to curl and was also reproducible on species where fresh material was available. Speaking about the results, Klopfstein said: "Our method emphasizes the importance of natural history museum collections, even for areas of research that could never have been anticipated at the time those collections were built."

###

Notes to Editors

1. The evolution of antennal courtship in diplazontine parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae, Diplazontinae)
Seraina Klopfstein, Donald L.J. Quicke and Christian Kropf
BMC Evolutionary Biology (in press)

During embargo, article available here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1675029553354316_article.pdf?random=276762

After the embargo, article available at the journal website: http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcevolbiol/

Please name the journal in any story you write. If you are writing for the web, please link to the article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central's open access policy.

Article citation and URL available on request at press@biomedcentral.com on the day of publication.

2. BMC Evolutionary Biology is an open access journal publishing original peer-reviewed research articles in all aspects of molecular and non-molecular evolution of all organisms, as well as phylogenetics and palaeontology. BMC Evolutionary Biology (ISSN 1471-2148) is indexed/tracked/covered by PubMed, MEDLINE, BIOSIS, CAS, EMBASE, Scopus, Zoological Record, Current Contents, CABI, Thomson Reuters (ISI) and Google Scholar.

3. BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/) is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher which has pioneered the open access publishing model. All peer-reviewed research articles published by BioMed Central are made immediately and freely accessible online, and are licensed to allow redistribution and reuse. BioMed Central is part of Springer Science+Business Media, a leading global publisher in the STM sector.


Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.