Divorce, Insect Style: Termites ...( sex-attractant in the pheromone and the...)

When termites of the same sex are battling for the affections of the opposite sex, the desired termite ceremoniously grooms each combatant in turn, as if to incite each to fight harder and prove its worth, Shellman-Reeve reports.

Almost comical is the reaction of one honeymooning termite when it detects a potential suitor for its nest mate. Instead of fighting the suitor, the termite assaults its mate. That's when intra-pair interaction gets nasty, Shellman-Reeve says.

But the Cornell biologist says she really had to laugh when she witnessed one example of off-again, on-again romance: "A male wandered off in search of a better mate but he had no luck. No one would have him. So he returned to his original mate. She assaulted him pretty severely for several minutes. Then she dragged him by the abdomen into a hole in their nest."

The study, "Courtship strategies and conflicts in a monogamous, biparental termite," was supported by Cornell, where Shellman-Reeve is a research associate in the Division of Neurobiology and Behavior. In a future study, Shellman-Reeve will use DNA fingerprinting techniques to determine whether her termites are truly mated for life -- or whether the urge to wander sometimes strikes again.

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Contact: Roger Segelken
hrs2@cornell.edu
607-255-9736
Cornell University News Service
21-Jan-1998