ANDRZEJ KRAUZESporting brown wings flecked with white, the gold swift moth looks pretty drab. Its sex life, however, is anything but. Mating in most moth species occurs when the alluring scent of a female causes a male to fly in search of a potential partner. But male gold swift moths that are ready to mate form a large group called a lek from which the females choose their partners.
In 2007, at a summer holiday cottage outside the town of Inverness in Scotland, newly retired University of Leeds entomologist John Turner was washing up the supper dishes as the sun was setting. Looking out into the small clearing behind the house, Turner noticed gold swift moths, a species he had studied previously, flying and mating in the twilight. Abandoning his chore, he rushed outside to watch the moths. He noted the lekking behavior, but he also observed any number of variations: males approaching large groups of females and even two moths meeting and copulating midair.
“They seemed to display every conceivable mating procedure,” Turner says.
Each day thereafter, he returned to the stand of woodrush and low-lying plants an hour or two before sunset ...
