B.10B Sweet Cockroach Courtship – 02
It is very difficult to remove sugar from your diet. Especially if you’re a cockroach. Researchers at North Carolina State University made a discovery about cockroaches and sugar. Jason Bittel describes the discovery in his article “Cockroach Reproduction Has Taken a Strange Turn.” Bittel explains that cockroaches normally love sugar. It is a large part of a cockroach’s meals. In a strange twist, scientists discovered some cockroaches with a mutation in the glucose-loving gene. They do not desire glucose. In fact, they are averse to it, which means they hate it.
This discovery was surprising because glucose is an important energy molecule in all living things. It also plays a big role in cockroach reproduction. Male cockroaches attract females by offering a mixture of fats and sugars, including glucose, in the form of a secretion from the tergal gland. The physical position of the female as she accepts the food places her in the perfect spot for the male to latch on and deposit sperm. According to Bittel, the encounter typically lasts a long time. This raises the odds of producing many offspring. An overproduction of offspring increases the chance that some will survive and reproduce.
The standard practice in pesticide production is to lure pests by lacing the poison with something that the pest desires. In the case of cockroaches, the addition of glucose usually does the trick. The glucose-loving cockroach is attracted to the sugar-laced pesticide. The cockroach eats the sugar-poison mixture and dies.
