B.10B Sweet Cockroach Courtship_approaching – 02
It is very hard 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.” He explains that cockroaches love sugar. It is a large part of a cockroach’s meals. Scientists discovered some cockroaches with a mutation in the glucose-loving gene. They do not desire glucose. In fact, they seem to hate it.
This was a surprise because glucose is an important energy molecule to all living things. And it plays a big role in cockroach reproduction. Male cockroaches attract females by offering a mixture of fats and sugars, including glucose. The mixture flows from the tergal gland of the male. The female is in a certain spot as she accepts the food. This places her in the perfect position for the male to latch on and deposit sperm. The exchange usually lasts a long time. This raises the odds of producing many offspring. Lots of offspring increase the chance that some will survive and reproduce.
When pesticides are made, something is added to attract the pest to the poison. For cockroaches, glucose is the perfect food to add. The glucose-loving cockroach is attracted to the sweet pesticide. The cockroach eats the sugar-poison mixture and dies. A cockroach that is missing the trait is not attracted to the sugar in the pesticide. It does not eat the poison.
