Mating behavior of the West Nile virus vector Culex pipiens – role of behavioral asymmetries

Female resistance and harmonic convergence influence male mating success in Aedes aegypti

“…Females were observed to exert a high degree of influence over the eventual outcome of a given mating attempt. As in other mosquito species 22,41,57,58 , rejection kicking was ubiquitously observed among mating attempts in Ae. aegypti (95.5% of all interactions contained female kicks).…”

Lateralization of Courtship Traits Impacts Pentatomid Male Mating Success—Evidence from Field Observations

“…A large body of literature pointed out that population-level lateralized traits are widespread among both social [48][49][50] and solitary insect species. Concerning the latter, a growing number of recent studies are reporting lateralized traits of the courtship and mating in insects, including earwigs (e.g., Euborellia plebeja Dohrn, Labidura riparia (Pallas)), Nala lividipes (Dufour), and Nala nepalensis (Burr) [51][52][53], the tephritid fly Bactrocera oleae (Rossi) [17], encyrtid parasitoids, Leptomastidea abnormis (Girault) and Anagyrus vladimiri Triapitsyn [18,19], mosquitoes, Aedes albopictus (Skuse) and Culex pipiens L. [14,24], as well as the green bottle fly Lucilia sericata (Meigen) [41]. In addition, population-level lateralization of mating traits has been found in key stored-product pests, such as the rice weevil, Sitophilus oryzae L. [20], the confused flour beetle, Tribolium confusum Jaqueline du Val [20,22] the khapra beetle, Trogoderma granarium Everts [21], the rust-red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) [23], the larger grain borer Prostephanus truncatus (Horn) [54].…”

“…However, an increasing number of studies are shedding light on individual-and population-level asymmetries in the brain and behavior of a growing number of insect species [1,2,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. The lateralization of courtship and mating behavior has been studied in several insect species, including a tephritid fly [17], hymenopteran parasitoids [18,19], stored-product beetles [20][21][22][23], mosquitoes [24], and a calliphorid fly [25]. However, strictly limited information is still available about lateralization of courtship and mating behavior in insect species belonging to the order Hemiptera [10].…”

Wing‐fanning frequency as a releaser boosting male mating success—High‐speed video analysis of courtship behavior in Campoplex capitator, a parasitoid of Lobesia botrana

“…However, one may argue that the presence of population‐level behavior asymmetries may look awkward, since earlier theoretical models suggested that individual‐level asymmetries are more frequent in solitary species, while population‐level asymmetries characterize social species (Ghirlanda & Vallortigara, 2004; Ghirlanda et al ., 2009). However, a growing body of researches pointed out that the occurrence of behavioral asymmetries in solitary invertebrates could be related to several frequent and/or prolonged social (Niven & Frasnelli, 2018) or “almost‐social” interactions (Benelli et al ., 2015a) occurring during their lifespan, including insect aggressive encounters (Benelli et al ., 2015a,b,c; Romano et al ., 2015), tick questing behavior (Benelli et al ., 2018), locust predator surveillance (Romano et al ., 2017, 2019), as well as courtship and mating approaches (Benelli et al ., 2016; Benelli, 2018; Benelli & Romano, 2019), just to cite some examples. This latter hypothesis seems conceivable also for C. capitator , since male parasitoids perform multiple and prolonged attempts to copulate with females, especially during the first week of their life (Ricciardi R. & Benelli G., personal observation).…”