Cryptic variation in insect female genitalia: establishment and applications of their observational techniques

与其他形态特征相比，内肥动物生殖器的进化速度普遍较快。然而，与雄性生殖器的种间多样性相比，雌性生殖器通常由柔软的结构组成，没有明显的标志，由于观察困难，受到的关注较少。本研究探讨了利用昆虫不同类群的交媾标本检测和描述雌性生殖器官多样性的有效方法。因此，苯甲醇和苯甲酸苄酯（BABB）的混合物已被证明是非常有效的使昆虫外骨骼透明。该方法表明，雌性生殖器在其柔软部分普遍表现出相当大的结构多样性，对应于物种特有的雄性生殖器。实验表明，雄性和雌性生殖器的结构匹配降低了雌性交配成本，如交配伤害和其他机制。

Animal genitalia of internal fertilizers generally show a rapid evolutionary rate compared with other morphological characters. However, compared to interspecific diversities in male genitalia, female genitalia, which usually consist of soft structures without conspicuous landmarks, received less attention because of the difficulty of observation. In this study, efficient methods to detect and describe diversities in female genital traits were explored using in-copula samples of various insect taxa. As the result, a mixture of benzyl alcohol and benzyl benzoate (BABB) has been proven to be highly effective to make insect exoskeleton transparent. The method revealed that female genitalia generally show a sizable structural diversity in their soft parts corresponding to the species-specific male genitalia. Experiments showed that the structural fitting between male and female genitalia reduces mating costs for females such caused by copulatory wounding and other mechanisms.