The Ig Nobel Prize for achievements that made people laugh and think was announced at Harvard University on September 9, 14, and a research group led by Associate Professor Kazunori Yoshizawa of the Hokkaido University Agricultural Research Institute announced in 2017. Received the "Biology Award".This is the second recipient of the Ig Nobel Prize at the university.
The reason for the award was "Discovery of female penis and male vagina in cave-dwelling insects".Associate Professor Yoshizawa and his colleagues discovered that the copulators of Neotrogla, a genus of booklices living in Brazilian caves, are reversed between males and females.We found that females have a penis-like copulator and insert it into males to mate.
The booklice is a small insect close to lice, and the male of the genus Neotrogla, which was the subject of this study, gives a nutrient-containing capsule to the female together with sperm during mating.In general, males are more active in mating than females because they produce more sperm and can reproduce with multiple females, but in Tricahechatate, females compete for this nutrition. It is believed that this reversed the aggressiveness of male and female mating and promoted the evolution of female penis.
The study of organisms in which the role of sex has been reversed, as discovered this time, seems to play an important role in verifying the theory of sex selection and in exploring the evolutionary background of gender differences (male and female). ..
Paper information:[Current Biology] Female Penis, Male Vagina, and Their Correlated Evolution in a Cave Insect(2014)
