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If you've never heard of the telephone pole beetle (Micromalthus debilis), then you're missing out. It's life-cycle is about as extreme as it gets. No sex. Just weirdness.
Scroll down to find out what the very rare male does to its mum.
📷David R Maddison
If you've never heard of the telephone pole beetle (Micromalthus debilis), then you're missing out. It's life-cycle is about as extreme as it gets. No sex. Just weirdness.
Scroll down to find out what the very rare male does to its mum.
📷David R Maddison
Most populations of this wood-munching beetle consist entirely of female larvae (diploid) that give birth to mobile triungulin larvae.
The triungulin moults and turns into another limbless female larva that gives birth to yet more triungulin larvae.
A legless female larva sometimes pupates to give rise to the adult female.
Sometimes, one of these limbless larvae gives birth to a male egg (haploid). The male larva hatches, shoves his head up his mum's genital opening and proceeds to eat from the inside out.
After this maternicide, the male larva pupates and turns into an adult male. These males are extremely rare.
It was recently found that you can heat shock the paedogenetic larvae to induce the development of adult male and female beetles.
These induced adults will try and mate, but there's really no point since their reproductive organs are non-functional.
If you want to read more there's a nice summary here
cell.com/current-biolog…
cell.com/current-biolog…
