The research, published by the journal Biology Letters , has determined that the testicles of this grasshopper "fill its entire abdomen", thus exceeding the size of the gonads of the fruit fly ( Drosophila bifurca ), whose testicles represent 10.6 percent of your body weight.
The coordinator of the study, Karim Vahed, has explained that, now, his team is studying "the reason why they are so big." If the universal evolutionary rules are applied, "this variation in the size of the testes would be related to the mating behavior of the female, that is, the testes tend to be larger in species where the females are more promiscuous ." However, in these cases the males use their testes to offer a large number of sperm and eliminate competition, so that they can mate repeatedly without depleting their sperm reserves. In the case of the coastal grasshopper, it has been shown that " larger testes do not necessarily produce more sperm per ejaculate," so further research will be needed on the relationship between endowment, promiscuity and reproduction in insects.
