Elaborate horns in a giant rhinoceros beetle incur negligible aerodynamic costs
Open accessAbstract
Sexually selected ornaments and weapons are among nature's most extravagant morphologies. Both ornaments and weapons improve a male's reproductive success; yet, unlike ornaments that need only attract females, weapons must be robust and functional structures because they are frequently tested during male–male combat. Consequently, weapons are expected to be particularly costly to bear. Here, we tested the aerodynamic costs of horns in the giant rhinoceros beetle,Trypoxylus dichotomus. We predicted that the long, forked head horn would have three main effects on flight performance: increased body mass, an anterior shift in the centre of mass and increased body drag. We found that the horns were surprisingly lightweight, and therefore had a trivial effect on the male beetles' total mass and mass distribution. Furthermore, because beetles typically fly at slow speeds and high body angles, horns had little effect on total body drag. Together, the weight and the drag of horns increased the overall force required to fly by less than 3 per cent, even in the largest males. Because low-cost structures are expected to be highly evolutionarily labile, the fact that horns incur very minor flight costs may have permitted both the elaboration and diversification of rhinoceros beetle horns.
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Economical load carriage was also documented in other species that produce exaggerated sexually selected traits.
“economical load carriage was also documented in other species that produce exaggerated sexually selected traits25”
From The peacock train does not handicap cursorial locomotor performance (2016) · cites this paper as [25]
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The peacock train does not handicap cursorial locomotor performance
Thavarajah, N. K., Tickle, P. G., Nudds, R. L., & Codd, J. R. (2016) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/srep36512 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
- Authors
- McCullough, E. L., & Tobalske, B. W.
- Affiliations
- University of Montana (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2013-05-07
- Volume
- 280
- Issue
- 1758
- Pages
- 20130197
- ISSN
- 0080-4649 (ISSN-L)
- 0962-8452
- 1471-2954
- PMC
- PMC3619469
- OpenAlex
- W2095981406
- Cited by
- 45
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 3
- FWCI
- 6.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0809127, 0919799)
- Ford Foundation
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Aerospace Engineering › Biomimetic flight and propulsion mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior
- Keywords
- Trypoxylus dichotomus, rhinoceros beetle, sexual selection, weapons, flight aerodynamics, body drag, center of mass, body mass, flight performance, evolutionary lability
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Coleoptera, Body Weight, Biological Evolution, Female, Flight, Animal, Male, Sex Characteristics
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