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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Beetles mating with beer bottles land award

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 10/3/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

TORONTO -- A paper on beer bottle-mating beetles was the toast of the Ig Nobel Prizes, which honour research tickling both the brain and the funny bone.

Research co-authored by University of Toronto professor Darryl Gwynne and his Australian colleague David Rentz was the winner in the biology category. The awards ceremony was held at Harvard University.

A parody of the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobel Prizes are handed out annually by the scientific humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research. The awards are "intended to celebrate the unusual, (and) honour the imaginative" while generating public interest in science, medicine and technology.

Gwynne and Rentz were honoured for their 1983 paper Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females. Gwynne joined U of T's Mississauga campus in 1987 and conducted his research as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Western Australia in Nedlands.

While carrying out field work and walking along a dirt road in Western Australia, Gwynne and Rentz observed male Australian jewel beetles trying to crawl atop or along the side of scattered brown beer bottles, or "stubbies."

Gwynne said the stubbies resemble a "super female" jewel beetle in shape and hue, big and orangey-brown in colour. The bottles also feature a slightly dimpled surface near the bottom -- aimed at preventing the bottle from slipping out of one's grasp -- that reflects light in much the same way as female wing covers.

The beetles' longing for loving was so strong that they fried to death under the hot sun trying to mate with the bottles and ignored the females. They were eaten by hungry ants or had to be removed by the researchers.

While being recognized for the humour in the research, Gwynne said there are serious messages in the findings.

Gwynne said human interference -- perhaps unwittingly -- in the evolutionary process can lead to unintended consequences. In this instance, the fact that female beetles were ignored by males could have a huge impact on the natural world.

"Improperly disposed of beer bottles not only present a physical and 'visual' hazard in the environment, but also could potentially cause great interference with the mating system of a beetle species," says the paper.

What's more, Gwynne says the research supports the theory of sexual selection -- that males, in their eagerness to mate, are the ones that make mating mistakes.

For the full list of 2011 Ig Nobel Prize winners, visit: http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 3, 2011 D1

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