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Quolls: Males may put too many resources into a single breeding season
Photo: Rights Managed / imago images/Ardea
Male quolls reproduce, then die.
For a long time, they posed a riddle to scientists.
The big question was: why?
Researchers now want to have found an answer.
According to a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, this could be due to their unrelenting urge to mate.
Quolls pour so many resources into a single breeding season that the death of an individual can result.
Fatal exhaustion from sex drive
According to the study, the males become self-exhausted because of their sex drive. During the mating season, they "don't seem to sleep nearly as much as they should," lead author Joshua Gaschk of the University of the Sunshine Coast told AFP.
This could be a reason for the death of males after mating.
Hoping to shed some light on the mysterious deaths of the males after their first successful sex, the researchers tagged seven male and six female pygmy quolls on the island of Groote Eylandt in tiny backpacks.
Data collected over a 42-day period showed that males were significantly more active during the mating season than females, who still live for up to four breeding seasons.
While females spent almost a quarter of their time - 24 percent - resting, males did just 7 percent.
Smaller relatives such as the broad-footed bag mouse are also semelparous, meaning they die after reproduction.
Research has shown that males die from internal bleeding and infection as a result of the stress of the mating season - but this is clearly not the case with pygmy quolls.
According to the expert Gaschk, the annual death of the males could threaten the survival of the pygmy quoll, whose population is already endangered by invasive species such as the cane toad.
At the same time, he points out that predatory marsupials have been pursuing the extreme reproductive strategy known as suicide reproduction for "thousands of years."
»It must have a use«.
ani/AFP