London, Oct 14 (ANI): A new study has found that male and female mosquitoes buzz at each other to signal their interest, but pairs which produce harmonic duets are more likely to mate, and produce sexier offspring.
Lauren Cator and Laura Harrington at Cornell University in Ithaca, USA decided to investigate why mosquitoes would bother harmonising.
They tethered female mosquitoes to strands of human hair and released three male suitors close to each one, while capturing video and sound recordings of the encounters.
Their analysis revealed that harmonising males were much more likely to get lucky and to produce offspring.
The males that couldn't sing in tune were often rejected, with females kicking them, holding them away with their legs, or even tilting their abdomens to prevent genital contact.
But some non-harmonising fellows were successful, so harmonising isn't necessarily required for males and females to mate.
To explore the benefits of the duet, the team mated five sons of both harmonising and non-harmonising males with an unrelated female.
They found that harmonising pairs was more likely to produce sons that could harmonise, suggesting that there is a genetic component to their musical ability.
"By singing in synch, males might signal to females that they carry genes that create sexy sons," New Scientist quoted Cator as saying. (ANI)
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