On March 3, a research group of Associate Professor Shinya Oba of the Faculty of Education of Nagasaki University and Airi Maeda, a student of the same department, announced that the male who protects the eggs has discovered that the natural enemy ants are physically and chemically eliminated. ..
The eggs of the turtle are laid on aquatic plants, and the males take care of them until immediately after hatching.In the open air, ants may attack the eggs of the turtle along the shore because they live in ponds, swamps, and paddy fields where there are many plants.In this case, until now it was not known how males would protect their eggs.
This time, the research group experimentally created a situation in which multiple ants could attack the eggs of a turtle, and investigated the incubation rate of eggs with and without the males protecting the eggs.As a result, when the males were removed, the incubation rate of the eggs decreased due to the predation of ants as compared with the case where the males were not removed.It was also confirmed that when the male was on the egg, the ants were difficult to approach the egg, and the male gave off a stink bug odor and repelled the ants.
The results of this research confirmed that turtles also have a common role in insects that parents protect their offspring, and that chemical protection by odor is a defense strategy regardless of land or aquatic life.This was evaluated as a finding that contributes to understanding the background of the evolution of egg protection behavior by insect parents.
Paper information:[Ecological Entomology] Physical care behavior of the giant water bug Kirkaldyia deyrolli (Heteroptera: Belostomatidae) against ants.
