1984] 
Wing — Photinus collustrans 
155 
Four females mated more than once. One of these females was 
dug from her burrow by a male, one was mated by a “sneaky” male, 
and two made themselves available to males by their own behavior. 
The two repeated matings due to female behavior occurred when 
females mated and entered their burrows, but on subsequent nights 
left their burrows, responded to male signals, and mated again. Only 
three of 108 females appeared on nights subsequent to the first 
mating. Two mated again; one remated once, the other twice. 
When more than one male landed at a responding female, the first 
male to reach her mounted and began copulation. The rival male 
attempted to mount the female (sometimes backwards), and to 
break the pair apart (Fig. 2). As a result, the copulating male moved 
or was pushed off the female and copulations proceeded in the tail- 
to-tail position, and variations thereof. (In the tail-to-tail position 
the male and female face in opposite directions while maintaining 
genitalic connection. Due to disturbance by rival males, pairs were 
sometimes moved into odd positions, even with the female on the 
copulating male’s dorsum.) 
Copulations were significantly longer when rival males were 
present. Mean duration for single male copulations was 57 sec 
(n=23, range 30-185 sec) compared to 842 sec (n=5, range 339-1410 
sec) Mann-Whitney (U=l 15) P < .0005 when rivals were present. In 
these cases, copulating males maintained the genital connection 
until after the females had entered their burrow (Fig. 3). Females 
entered head first, dragging the coupled males backwards down the 
burrow. In one case, only the head and thorax of the male remained 
outside the burrow when the genital connection was broken. After 
disengaging, males climbed out and flew away. After the mated 
male departed, in four of seven cases the rival male tried to remove 
the female from her burrow. Rival males located the burrow 
opening by antennating the soil. Rivals dug at the burrow (Fig. 4), 
sometimes completely entering it. On one occasion the male 
succeeded in removing the female from her burrow and mated with 
her (this accounted for the third multiple mating) (Fig. 5). 
Unsuccessful males dug for as long as 35 min before leaving. 
The fourth repeated mating resulted from another behavior of 
rival males and was observed once during this study and once since 
then. The rival “sneaky” male was non-aggressive, and made only 
occasional contact with the copulating pair. The rival gently 
antennated the pair and then walked away, returned and antennated 
