214 
Psyche 
[June-September 
while they hang from a perch with their front legs. Prey carried by 
the hindlegs had a mean estimated length of 8.8 mm (N = 9) and 
included three bulky moths and one large lepidopterous larva. Prey 
pierced by the beak averaged 3.8 mm in length (N = 11) and con¬ 
sisted entirely of delicate mirids and various soft-winged beetles. 
Males with prey release a sex pheromone from glands in the 
posterior abdomen, an attractant that draws both males and females 
to them. In 19.5 hr of observation, I recorded 10 male-male encoun¬ 
ters and 31 male-female interactions. Male visitors uniformly 
attempted to steal the prey from the calling male and succeeded on 
two occasions. Prey piracy by males is common among bittacids 
(Thornhill 1979). Some females may also visit calling males solely to 
secure a food gift. One male-female interaction ended when the 
female removed the prey from the male and flew away. In another 
case, the female probed the male’s prey for about 3 min after coming 
to his perch; the male attempted without success to effect a copula¬ 
tion and eventually a tussle for control of the prey ensued leading 
the pair to tumble off the perch and onto the ground. The female 
left; the male returned to his perch and probed the prey briefly 
before discarding it, apparently because the female had drained it of 
its contents. 
In more typical interactions between males and females, the arriv¬ 
ing female alighted causing the male to transfer the prey to his 
mouthparts. In my observations, unlike those of Bornemissza (1966) 
the female usually probed nuptial gift briefly with her beak (N = 
26); on only three occasions a female refrained from “testing” the 
prey and all three involved unusually large nuptial gifts whose 
potential value might have ben assessed visually. As the female 
probed the gift, the male attempted to couple with her. In fifteen 
cases, the female refused to permit mating to occur, withdrawing 
from the male after the initial probe of his present. 
In cases in which copulation occurred the male usually succeeded 
in pulling the prey from the female with his hindlegs shortly after 
insertion of his genitalia. The female, which had been facing the 
male in this initial phase of the interaction, would then drop down 
so that the bodies of the copulating pair formed an “L”. (The aver¬ 
age time from the start of an encounter to assumption of the “L” 
position was 3.1 min.). 
While the female hung below the male she employed her hindlegs 
to pull vigorously at the male’s hindlegs which were holding the prey 
