A hotter climate may lead to more same-sex mounting in corpse-eating beetles

New research suggests that heat stress increases the occurrence of same-sex sexual interactions between male burying beetles—but also that a surprising number of male–male encounters occur under control conditions. This ongoing project is investigating whether a possible trade-off between heat protection and social-communication cuticular hydrocarbons may be involved in possible sex-recognition errors, and whether these behaviors may result in any costs to reproductive success.