# s-gene-behav: short horns for large results (in giant hissing cockroaches)

<< males from two species of giant hissing cockroaches from Madagascar may have evolved different physical characteristics based on their strategies for winning a female >>

<<  "These cockroaches are acting like red deer in the rut, competing for females by combat, but if they don't have the size and strength to win fights outright, they can try and sneak mates. A male cockroach seems to be adapted to be either a lover or a fighter, and what's interesting is that they do this before they become fully adult, at the final moult."  >>  Kate Durrant.

<< Animals that must compete for a mate can do so in various ways: some males will defend a female from rival males by force, while others will sneak past larger males and mate with females behind their backs >>

<< These two strategies, 'fighters' and 'lovers', are associated with different behaviours and characteristics >>

AA << found that the Flat-horned cockroach, which is small with short horns (as its name suggests), was non-aggressive and had large testes, which indicates that it is more likely to avoid fighting by mating with females behind the backs of larger males, while the Wide-horned cockroach, which is large and heavily armoured with large horns, was highly aggressive in combat between males and was not well-endowed in terms of testes size >>

Species of giant cockroaches employ different strategies in the mating game. Nov. 8, 2016

http://m.phys.org/news/2016-11-species-giant-cockroaches-strategies-game.html

Kate  L.  Durrant, Ian  M.  Skicko, et al.  Comparative  morphological  trade-offs between  pre-  and  post- copulatory sexual selection  in  Giant  hissing cockroaches  (Tribe:  Gromphadorhini). Nature. Scientific Reports 6, Article  number:  36755. Publ online Nov. 07, 2016. doi: 10.1038/srep36755

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep36755