Owing to the high competition and the prevalence of natural selection, many male insects must develop alternative tactics to mate with a female. Weaker males who lose in a competition (or loser males) may resort to hovering or sneaking around in order to find a mate. Recent studies have also shown that alternative mating behavior is influenced by environmental factors such as food availability, predation, and population density. For example, scorpionflies—which are often used to study the mating behavior of insects—use three alternative mating tactics—gifting nutritious saliva, gifting food, and forced mating—to obtain a mate. Male Japanese scorpionflies also employ feeding mating (i.e., mating while females feed without gifting them anything or releasing pheromones).
