Mating mites trapped in amber reveal sex role reversal

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—In the mating game, some female mites are mightier than their mates, new research at the University of Michigan and the Russian Academy of Sciences suggests. The evidence comes, in part, from 40 million-year-old mating mites preserved in Baltic amber. In a paper published March 1 in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers Pavel Klimov and Ekaterina Sidorchuk describe an extinct mite species in which the traditional sex roles were reversed. "In this species, it is the female who has partial or complete control of mating," said Klimov, an associate research scientist at the U-M Museum of Zoology. "This is in contrast to the present-day reproductive behavior of many mite species where almost all aspects of copulation are controlled by males." In mites, as in other animals including humans, the battle of the sexes has been raging throughout evolutionary history. Each gender struggles to get the upper hand to assure that their interests are protected. In the case of mites, males benefit from coercing females to mate and making sure no other males mate with them.