The Effect Of Age On Kicking Latency In Callosobruchus maculatus

Abstract

Callosobruchus maculatus mating behavior has been extensively studied. In this species, females are known to kick their mates during copulation. In this study I use previous experiments as a base to observe if this behavior, referred to as Kicking Latency, is affected by the age of the male she is mating with. I observed virgin males and virgin females mating and timed how long it took for kicking to begin along with recording the ages of the individuals copulating. After using a linear regression to analyze the data, I found that female age had a positive, significant impact on kicking latency while male age has a negative, nonsignificant impact on kicking latency.