Why you should not have sex with a bedbug

What would you say constitutes “bad sex”? I guess it’s a very personal thing, isn’t it? A few complaints I’ve heard before (not personally directed ones, of course) are factors like a lack of effort, premature ejaculation, selfishness… A partner who is unwilling to be adventurous perhaps? But hey girls, how about that awkward moment when you’re about to get down to business and the guy apparently completely dismisses your vagina and PIERCES HIS PENIS STRAIGHT INTO YOUR STOMACH?! Take a moment to think about our bedbug sisters, for whom this is a real issue. This practice, my friends, is known as traumatic insemination.

TRAUMATIC INSEMINATION.

The name alone gives me the shivers. The thing is, bedbugs only mate in this way, despite the females having a perfectly good and functioning vagina. So why has this seemingly horrific mating behaviour evolved? It is likely that it was down to competition between males, all of whom were trying to get their own sperm as close to the female’s reproductive tract as possible (why use the vagina when you can go straight for the ovaries, right?!)

Obviously, this mating practice is not ideal for the female bedbug. Essentially, every time she has sex she is being seriously wounded. Although on the plus side, evolution in all its wonderful glory has tried its best to help the females respond to this problematic mating practice. Female bedbugs have evolved a unique thing called a spermalege, which is basically like a little pseudo-vagina situated on the abdomen; roughly the area into which the males are likely to spear their member. It makes sense to think that this evolutionary response benefits the females by causing less wound damage during mating, but at least one study has shown that the spermalege does not actually reduce the cost of wound healing. It is more likely that this counter-adaptation functions to reduce the risk of infections that can be picked up during mating.

 And it’s not just the females who have to watch out – male bedbugs will happily traumatically inseminate anyone who happens to be around, including family members, males, and creatures of other species. Those disgusting little bastards! Oh and guess what… All this is quite possibly happening in your bed as you sleep.

Anyway, sweet dreams, SLEEP TIGHT XXX

The penis-fencing flatworm

Flatworms are described by Wikipedia as

 ”a phylum of relatively simple bilaterian, unsegmented, soft-bodied invertebrate animals…have no body cavity, and no specialized circulatory and respiratory organs, which restricts them to flattened shapes that allow oxygen and nutrients to pass through their bodies by diffusion.”

Now… Here it sounds like the flatworm kind of got a raw deal in the course of evolution. A “simple” creature, so simple in fact that it doesn’t even have a body cavity or respitory organs! What a loser! And a lazy one at that: The majority of species of flatworm are parasites and so rely on other organisms to live! And just to point out another flaw while I’m at it, some of them don’t even have an anus and they regurgitate their waste back out the only opening they have: Their mouth. EEWWW. Jeez, I’m glad I’m not a flatworm! But hold on, there are THOUSANDS of species of flatworm, and it just so happens that some of them are particularly interesting. If you are a creep like me for whom “interesting” directly translates as “does cool sex stuff”

This is a turbellarian.

Turbellaria are a species of flatworm that are described as mostly free-living. Now, the image I get in my head when I think of free-living is this:

Oh man! I am so free right now!

But in biological terms, this simply means that an organism is not parasitic on another individual. In other words, being a “free living”  flatworm means that you move in order to eat. Those crazy free-living worm-hippies.

All turbellaria are hermaphrodites, meaning that they contain both male and female reproductive  sex cells, and can reproduce both sexually (as in when a lady and a man love each other very much..) and asexually (you split yourself in two to make an ickle clone of yourself. No other individual involved. Effective but presumably not as much fun).  An interesting question lies here. If an organism can produce asexually, why not just do that all the time? After all, sexual reproduction is harder work and a larger drain on our resources than we might think. Firstly you have to find a mate. And then they have to mate with you. And then you end up with offspring that is only made up of about 50% of your genetic material. But, if you produce asexually (i.e. on your own), you end up with a clone of yourself which is made up of 100% of your genes and what could be better than that?!

Unfortunately, multicellular organisms who rely completely on asexual reproduction tend not to last very long, because if you are only ever making clones of yourself with none of the genetic variation that come as standard with gamete-mingling sexual reproduction, you are leaving your offspring incredibly vulnerable to disease and ultimately extinction. So although asexual reproduction is good for some reasons under certain circumstances, it is useful to switch between sexual and asexual strategies. And that is what the turbellaria do. And when they do engage in sexual reproduction, penis fencing is often involved.

THAT’S RIGHT. I SAID PENIS FENCING.

Fencing. With a penis.

Or four penises (peni?) as the case may well be with this species.

Those two little white nubbins you can see at the top of each organism there? Yup. Those are penises. And what these flatworms apparently do is try to fertilise the other. Ultimately, the “winner” is the one who manages to pierce the skin of the other, and insert their sperm. The one who loses out in this unfortunate battle is the one who becomes the “mother”, as they have to invest much energy into producing the offspring, while the “father” simply deposits his sperm and leaves. Who says romance is dead?

The below video is probably NSFW, especially with the sound on. You’ll see what I mean. Bom-chikka-wow-wow! FLATWORM PORN!

Happy new year!

I know everyone always complains about hogmanay (or New Year’s Eve to all those who are not Scottish). It’s all a massive build up full of expectation and at the end of it all you get is severe memory loss, a few mystery bruises and the worst hangover you’ve had since exactly 365 days ago.

But I have to admit, I love New Year. It’s always a great night out but beyond that, I revel in the optimism that people feel around about January 1st. True, much of this optimism will ultimately end up as nothing more than bitter disappointment, failed diets and gloominess. But it would be nice if it all lasted a little bit longer, wouldn’t it? I for one am feeling hopeful about this year. Let’s face it, 2011 wasn’t the Best Year Ever for most of us. I like the idea of a brand new start and a new outlook.

This year is going to bring a lot of changes for me personally. In a few days time I am relocating from Fife to Newcastle which should be fun. I am going to be a PhD student, which I am still trying to come to terms with since this was definitely not something I thought I could ever achieve until the last year.

I don’t have any new year’s resolutions, because I really don’t see the point in them. I will just do what I do every year and try to work my ass off to be as good as I can be at what I’m doing. Ed Yong summed it up for me with this tweet on Hogmanay:

This really touched me, because I have had a lot of worries about my decision to move to Newcastle to do my PhD, as I have written about here before. I am moving further away from my family and partner than would be preferred, and I am going to have less than no money for a long, long time. But I will be doing exactly what I want to do. My PhD project feels like it was created for me (it was an advertised post, I didn’t write the proposal..) and I am so thankful that I have been given the opportunity to do it. So although things will be tough at first, I know I am doing the right thing and I genuinely look forward to whatever 2012 has got to offer. On that note, I wish all of you the best for the coming year and, echoing Ed’s sentiments, I hope everyone ends up doing the things they love, and loving the things they do.

Happy new year!

Lauren

P.s. An interesting fact to finish as I feel that post was a bit too sentimental for my writing style: WordPress tells me that the most common search terms used to find my blog was a combination of “hyena, birth, clitoris and bonobo”. This had already made my year better.