Before mating, some male and female dung beetles work together to move their brood balls to a location unknown to either.Credit: Wits University
Dung beetles collect and roll dung into a mass for various uses, including ‘brood balls’, which the female buries as a receptacle for laying an egg.
When the egg hatches, the larva then uses the ball as source of food.
The process is a team effort with male and female dung beetles working together to move the brood ball to a spontaneously chosen spot.
In a study including Marcus Byrne, professor at the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and published in The Proceedings of the Royal Society, it is shown that both the Southern African Sisyphus fasciculatus and European Sisyphus schaefferi do this.
Lead author, Claudia Tocco, from Lund University, Sweden, said: “On uneven terrain, the male pulls the ball with his front legs while facing the ball and moving backwards on its back legs. At the same time the female, with her back legs on the ball, heads down towards the ground, and with front legs on the ground, simultaneously appears to push the ball in the same direction.
“On flat surfaces, the male steers the brood ball while the female follows keeping points of contact with the ball.”
When paired up for mating, the exact location the pair chooses to stop and bury their brood ball is also selected on the go, based on the properties of the terrain they are covering.
“We got a Sisyphus pair to climb a toy wall. They almost made it 30cm high,” she said. “This shows that they do not use landmarks and therefore do not need to remember such details. We don’t know how they communicate during this collaborative rolling behaviour. I think it is through touch, sensing movement of the ball.”
