Contortionists. Blue-tailed Damselflies, Ischnura elegans, Gaasperplaspark, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
It's the time of the year for Damselfly contortions. Sighting those remarkable in-tandem pairs you may have wondered what is really going on.
These pretty, colorful creatures don't mate from their ultimate ends, at least their males don't. Thus contortion is needed.
So what happens? Well, the male's primary reproductive organ - testes and genital pore - is at the ninth segment, almost at our insect's end. Before mating, he curls upon himself and delivers sperm from that pore to the sperm vesicle at segment two just below his thorax. There it's stored until a likely Damsel comes along. He grasps her by the neck with his final clampers. She moves her reproductive end to his vesicle; there a penile structure pumps sperm into her genital opening. All of this takes just under 10 minutes.
And then the tandem separates. But he does guard carefully that another male doesn't scrape his future-giving sap out of her. Sometimes he loses; if he doesn't, he'll hover around until she's deposited her now fertilised eggs in a likely place for hatching.
Contortionists. Blue-tailed Damselflies, Ischnura elegans, Gaasperplaspark, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
It's the time of the year for Damselfly contortions. Sighting those remarkable in-tandem pairs you may have wondered what is really going on.
These pretty, colorful creatures don't mate from their ultimate ends, at least their males don't. Thus contortion is needed.
So what happens? Well, the male's primary reproductive organ - testes and genital pore - is at the ninth segment, almost at our insect's end. Before mating, he curls upon himself and delivers sperm from that pore to the sperm vesicle at segment two just below his thorax. There it's stored until a likely Damsel comes along. He grasps her by the neck with his final clampers. She moves her reproductive end to his vesicle; there a penile structure pumps sperm into her genital opening. All of this takes just under 10 minutes.
And then the tandem separates. But he does guard carefully that another male doesn't scrape his future-giving sap out of her. Sometimes he loses; if he doesn't, he'll hover around until she's deposited her now fertilised eggs in a likely place for hatching.