Effectiveness of the mating plug in Atrophaneura alcinous (Lepidoptera : Papilionidae)

Abstract

At mating, males of Atrophaneura alcinous plug the female copulatory duct with a secretory material, but some females copulate several times and can receive spermatophores from different males up to three times. Remating by plugged females mostly takes place shortly after the first mating, when the freshly formed first plug has not completely hardened. A freshly formed plug can be pressed aside or tunneled by the male aedeagus, and thus intromission and subsequent spermatophore transfer are sometimes possible. This is not always the case, however, and larger plugs are more likely to prevent aedeagus intrusion even if they are not completely hardened. Also, a few females remated a day after the first mating or later, when the first plug is already very hard. Completely hardened plugs are more effective than freshly formed ones; later mating males can thrust the aedeagus into the ductus bursae only when the plug is less than ca 1.2 mg (dry weight). The occurrence of female re-mating in plug-forming species thus does not necessarily mean that the plug is ineffective.

The occurrence of multiple mating in a wild population of the ladybird beetleHarmonia axyridis Pallas (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae)

“…In some insect taxa, a lifetime copulation number can be easily estimated by counting number of spermatophores remaining in the spermatheca (e.g. Matsumoto & Suzuki 1992), but more clarification is needed on the actual conditions for multiple mating in a wild population. In coccinellid ladybird beetles, mating behavior was observed in laboratory conditions by Obata (1987Obata ( , 1988.…”

Sphragis in Parnassius mnemosyne (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae): male-derived insemination plugs loose efficiency with progress of female flight

“…Alternatively, the males that survive towards end of adult flight may have depleted their body resources, producing incompletely developed sphragis during belated mating (Pierre 1985;Matsumoto & Suzuki 1992;M.S. Fred, personal communication).…”

The ejaculatory biology of leafcutter ants

“…The mating plug, another product of the AGs, was found earlier to prevent additional inseminations in bumblebees (Baer et al, 2001;Duvoisin et al, 1999) and non-social insects (Bretman et al, 2010;Dottorini et al, 2012;Matsumoto and Suzuki, 1992;Polak et al, 2001), and was suggested to prevent multiple insemination in fire ants (Mikheyev, 2003). However, mating plugs are unlikely to have a similar function in A. colombica.…”