* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment

    Unveiling the Enigmatic: First Looks at Destruction and Puck in ‘The Sandman

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Mavs CEO holds firm on new arena, entertainment district in Dallas – Dallas News

    Mavs CEO Stands Strong on Vision for New Arena and Entertainment District in Dallas

    Entertainment: On Your Marks, Get Set, Beer Run! – Urban Milwaukee

    Get Ready to Race: The Ultimate Beer Run Experience Awaits!

    Rachel Guttman Launches Entertainment Law Firm Gutt Law, PLLC [Exclusive] – MusicRow.com

    Rachel Guttman Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Law Firm: Gutt Law, PLLC!

    HYBE Cashes In: Offloads Final Stake in K-Pop Rival SM Entertainment for $177 Million!

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Bajeed Pattan Joins Forbes Technology Council as Innovation Leader – PRWeb

    Bajeed Pattan Takes the Helm as Innovation Leader at Forbes Technology Council!

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Drone technology demo in Cambria County showcases future of lifesaving medical deliveries – local21news.com

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: Drone Technology Takes Flight for Lifesaving Medical Deliveries in Cambria County

    Revolutionary Harvesting Technology Promises to Slash CAR-T Manufacturing Costs!

    Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism – International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – ICCT

    Unplugged: The Surge of Anti-Technology Extremism

    Finland to head EU’s quantum defense technology project – Latest news from Azerbaijan

    Finland Takes the Lead in Pioneering EU’s Quantum Defense Technology Initiative!

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment

    Unveiling the Enigmatic: First Looks at Destruction and Puck in ‘The Sandman

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Jackie Chan Reveals This Family Member ‘Never Watched’ The Whole Of Any Of His Movies – Yahoo

    Mavs CEO holds firm on new arena, entertainment district in Dallas – Dallas News

    Mavs CEO Stands Strong on Vision for New Arena and Entertainment District in Dallas

    Entertainment: On Your Marks, Get Set, Beer Run! – Urban Milwaukee

    Get Ready to Race: The Ultimate Beer Run Experience Awaits!

    Rachel Guttman Launches Entertainment Law Firm Gutt Law, PLLC [Exclusive] – MusicRow.com

    Rachel Guttman Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Law Firm: Gutt Law, PLLC!

    HYBE Cashes In: Offloads Final Stake in K-Pop Rival SM Entertainment for $177 Million!

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Bajeed Pattan Joins Forbes Technology Council as Innovation Leader – PRWeb

    Bajeed Pattan Takes the Helm as Innovation Leader at Forbes Technology Council!

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Lafayette Regional Technology Council – Tech Leadership That’s Homegrown and Future-Focused – Discover Lafayette

    Drone technology demo in Cambria County showcases future of lifesaving medical deliveries – local21news.com

    Revolutionizing Healthcare: Drone Technology Takes Flight for Lifesaving Medical Deliveries in Cambria County

    Revolutionary Harvesting Technology Promises to Slash CAR-T Manufacturing Costs!

    Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Technology Extremism – International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – ICCT

    Unplugged: The Surge of Anti-Technology Extremism

    Finland to head EU’s quantum defense technology project – Latest news from Azerbaijan

    Finland Takes the Lead in Pioneering EU’s Quantum Defense Technology Initiative!

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

This bug can get 26 times bigger than its smallest specimen

June 21, 2024
in Science
This bug can get 26 times bigger than its smallest specimen
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

When a fig tree falls in the Panamanian rainforest, it calls an army of strangely shaped insects to war.

Known as jousting weevils, these beetles have heads shaped like a knight’s lance, which males use to flip each other off logs as they fight over females.

“The tree releases volatiles and beetles from the forest literally emerge out of the woodwork and fly onto that tree, because this is a place where they can lay their eggs,” says Ummat Somjee, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Texas at Austin and a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Once a male wins over a female, they mate, and then he lays his face across her body to guard her against the pursuit of other males while she drills a hole in the tree and lays her fertilized eggs inside. 

Jousting weevils are impressive enough, but it turns out they have another whopping distinction: Possessing one of the biggest ranges of body sizes on Earth. Only the closely related giraffe weevil has a greater disparity. (Read more: “Choose your weapon: How animals got their tusks, horns, and antlers.”)

When Somjee and his colleagues collected jousting weevils from the wild and measured them, they found “the smallest individual can be about 26 times smaller in mass than the largest individual,” he says.

For reference, when the scientists looked across 11 orders of other insects, a more typical size variation between adults was about three times. Even when they expanded their search to vertebrates such as mammals and birds, no variation within a single species came anywhere close, according to a study published June 20 in the journal Evolution.

Four horned insects standing on wood. Two have locked horns in battle.

Two large males fight over a female, who is using her lance to drill into the wood to lay her eggs. A small male is hiding underneath her.

Photograph By Ummat Somjee

A ‘war zone’ writ small

Most of this variation comes from the size of their lances: The largest males sport weapons that can account for up to 69 percent of their body length.

“You see these large males walking around, it’s almost awkward,” says Somjee, who led the research. “They’re having a hard time stepping over things.” (See “These stunning insect close-ups reveal dazzling bug complexity.”)

This would be like a boxer having a fist more than half as big as their body, he says.

And in a world full of miniature giants, you might think that only the largest males successfully breed with the females. Not so.

Surprisingly, tiny males sometimes mate with giant females, and large males sometimes mate with tiny females, Somjee says. 

In fact, Somjee described a scene in which a very large male laid its head across the body of a female he had just mated with. But then a much smaller male crept in and appeared to mate with the female before the larger male knew what was going on. Once the larger male clued in, though, he sent the little guy flying with a flick of his lance.  

Intrigued, the scientists discovered smaller males pack a different sort of weapon—much larger testes, which the scientist suspect allows them to transfer more sperm than larger males.

This hyper-competitiveness likely stems from the scarcity of fallen trees.

“A tree doesn’t fall very often, and when it does, there are beetles in the surrounding area that are all looking for a chance to exploit that resource,” says Somjee, who notes that there can be something like 400 beetles per square meter. 

“They can reach these very, very extreme densities. And it’s a war zone.”

A line up of insects small too large.

A graphic shows size differences between males and females. Unlike other insect species, females also sport headgear, which they use to fight other females.

Photograph By Peter Marting

Females fight, too

While males in many species sport the craziest headgear, in jousting weevils at least, the females are also armed. 

Even as males are fighting over access to females, females actively duel with each other over the most prized egg-laying spots, says Somjee. And just as with the males, females can vary in size up to 22 times between the most tiny and most gargantuan.

Once a female weevil finds a nice location, she then uses her head weapon to drill a hole in the bark—meaning its useful in two scenarios.

“We talk about male weapons and how crazy and big they are, and that’s definitely something more well understood when it comes to sexual selection,” says Nicole Lopez, an evolutionary biologist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Montana. “So I’m really happy that they included the females in it.” (Related: “As males evolve to have better weapons, females develop bigger brains.”) 

Lopez, who was not involved in the research, says the new study offers a new glimpse into how evolution can push animal weapons to extremes.

“There’s been a lot of papers that look at developmental trade-offs and constraints,” says Lopez. “But being able to look at it within a species, naturally, is pretty unique.”

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : National Geographic – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/jousting-weevils-bodies-size-mating-panama

Tags: biggersciencetimes
Previous Post

6 alternatives to the most popular national park lodges

Next Post

The best telescopes for beginners

Some birds are left behind in a race to beat the heat – Nature

Some birds are left behind in a race to beat the heat – Nature

June 1, 2025
A passing star could fling Earth out of orbit – Science News

A passing star could fling Earth out of orbit – Science News

June 1, 2025
John Hancock Multimanager Lifestyle Moderate Portfolio Q1 2025 Commentary (JALMX) – Seeking Alpha

Unlocking Potential: Insights from the John Hancock Multimanager Lifestyle Moderate Portfolio Q1 2025

June 1, 2025
Editorial: The world promised by AI isn’t necessarily a better one – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Editorial: The world promised by AI isn’t necessarily a better one – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

June 1, 2025
Little Rock economy growing faster than other similarly-sized cities, study shows – thv11.com

Little Rock’s Economy Outpaces Peers: A Promising Growth Story!

June 1, 2025

Unveiling the Enigmatic: First Looks at Destruction and Puck in ‘The Sandman

June 1, 2025
Why Gen Z Will Demand Crypto-Enabled Health Systems – Forbes

How Gen Z is Shaping the Future of Crypto-Enabled Health Systems

June 1, 2025
State Sen. Skoufis declares war on en­ter­tainment ticketing practices in closing days of session – Spectrum News

State Senator Skoufis Takes a Stand Against Unfair Ticketing Practices in Final Session Push!

June 1, 2025
Bajeed Pattan Joins Forbes Technology Council as Innovation Leader – PRWeb

Bajeed Pattan Takes the Helm as Innovation Leader at Forbes Technology Council!

June 1, 2025
With college sports in limbo and key issues coming to a head, the spotlight is on the SEC: ‘It’s going to get heated’ – Yahoo Sports

SEC Showdown: Tensions Rise as College Sports Face Uncertain Future

June 1, 2025

Categories

Archives

June 2025
MTWTFSS
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 
« May    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (656)
  • Economy (671)
  • Entertainment (21,577)
  • General (15,254)
  • Health (9,713)
  • Lifestyle (673)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (672)
  • Politics (679)
  • Science (15,891)
  • Sports (21,175)
  • Technology (15,658)
  • World (659)

Recent News

Some birds are left behind in a race to beat the heat – Nature

Some birds are left behind in a race to beat the heat – Nature

June 1, 2025
A passing star could fling Earth out of orbit – Science News

A passing star could fling Earth out of orbit – Science News

June 1, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version