Male butterflies and moths commonly drink from puddles, a behavior known as puddling. Scott Smedley and Thomas Eisner (1996) report a detailed physiological analysis of puddling in the moth Gluphisia septentrionis. A male G. septentrionis may puddle for hours at a time. He rapidly processes huge amounts of water, extracting the sodium and expelling the excess liquid in anal jets (see Smedley and Eisner’s paper for a dramatic photo). The male moth will later give his harvest of sodium to a female during mating. The female will then put much of the sodium into her eggs. Speculate on the role this gift plays in the moth’s mating ritual and in the courtship roles taken by the male and the female. How would you test your ideas?
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