BEDBUGS are notoriously undiscerning about who they mount, and are wont to stab their penis straight into another male's abdomen. Now it seems they have evolved a way of telling mistaken mounters to back off.
Female bedbugs have a structure beneath their carapace to guide the penis into a mass of infection-fighting immune cells, but males have no such protection. Camilla Ryne at Lund University in Sweden found that they respond instead by emitting a pheromone normally used to warn off predators.
Males with blocked glands were mounted as often as other males, but for longer and suffered more wounds (Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.09.033). "This is the first time
Female bedbugs have a structure beneath their carapace to guide the penis into a mass of infection-fighting immune cells, but males have no such protection. Camilla Ryne at Lund University in Sweden found that they respond instead by emitting a pheromone normally used to warn off predators.
Males with blocked glands were mounted as often as other males, but for longer and suffered more wounds (Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.09.033). "This is the first time
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