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If the female is receptive, the male deposits a spermatophore, or a packet of genetic material, on the bottom of the pond.

What Wegener is now working on is the possibility that the males are taking advantage of any opportunity to rid themselves of lower quality spermatophores, which would help to explain why they deposit the majority of their spermatophore stores with each sexual encounter, regardless of how much of it is likely to be eaten by his mate.

But the researchers also found that this preference for larger females didn’t influence the males to impart any less of their spermatophore stores to the smaller, ‘hungrier’ females, and this suggested that by eating spermatophores, the smaller females might be able to produce higher numbers of healthier offspring than they could otherwise manage.

What Wegener is now working on is the possibility that the males are taking advantage of any opportunity to rid themselves of lower quality spermatophores, which would explain why they deposit the majority of their spermatophore stores with each sexual encounter, regardless of how much of it is likely to be eaten by his mate.

But the researchers also found that this preference for larger females didn’t influence the males to impart any less than the usual 60% or so of their spermatophore stores to the smaller, ‘hungrier’ females, and this suggested that by eating spermatophores, the smaller females were able to produce higher numbers of healthier offspring than they could otherwise manage.