Microbe drives tropical butterfly species to a male-killing frenzy

I don't get it

How can an almost exclusively female population of butterflies survive over a decade ?

I understood that males from other regions come in to bang to exhaustion, but it seems weird that it should be enough to generate another generation of almost-only females.

Nature is one hell of a complicated thing.

Microbes ARE part of the environment.

There seem to be two potentially different descriptions of the problem that can be cured by antibiotics.

1) the males usually hatch after the females - but the females are driven by the infection to eat the male egg cases before they can hatch.

2) the infection stops or delays the hatching of the male eggs - which the females then happen to eat as part of their normal diet of egg cases.

The article suggests it is case 1 - but case 2 seems equally possible unless there is something not being revealed from the study.

The latin name of the male-killing microbe is Feministicus Birkenstockiae.

"The next step to forming a conclusive link between the cannibalistic behaviour displayed in infected butterflies and the fusing of their chromosomes is to sequence the DNA of the ‘neo-W’ chromosome, Ffrench-Constant explained."

Then we can start on genetically engineering a version that affects humans in order to be one step closer to triggering a zombie apocalypse. Or something.

I glossed over the science bit. This is biology. Not my thing.

The Screwfly Solution

James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Bradley Sheldon) 1977. A reversal of this scenario.

Not that I'm suggesting that microbes read S.F.