Cutting off bug penises in the name of science

Our latest paper is out and already getting some media attention!

Admittedly I had no part in the penis cutting aspect of this paper, that was all Liam’s work. I did help with the awesome microCT scans of mating bugs however. So once you’ve finished laughing at the guardian article, go check out the paper itself for an idea of what those crazy penises are actually doing during mating!

Micro-CT scan showing external genitalia of Lygaeus simulans following mating. The long penis can be seen in pink, and the paired claspers in blue.
Micro-CT scan showing external genitalia of Lygaeus simulans following mating. The long penis can be seen in pink, and the paired claspers in blue.

Published by

MothProf

I used to be BugPhD, but I finished and moved on to insects new.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s