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In what looks like a still from a film noir, two male stag beetles clash against a shadowy dropback, deep in the oak forests of Russia’s Voronezh region. Their pitched battle for dominance, and for the chance to win over a nearby mate, unfolds during the brief summer period when these insects emerge from the undergrowth to reproduce.
Photographer Svetlana Ivanenko says she traveled over 400 miles to capture this intimate scene. Her photograph won the “Insects” category in the Close Up Photographer of the Year competition.
The epic skirmishes between stag beetles are well-documented, in part because this behavior is the culminating—and most visible—act of a stag beetle’s life.
The insects spend anywhere between three and six years underground as larvae, feeding on dead woody materials and bolstering the fat stores that sustain them through adulthood. Warmer temperatures in summer months trigger fully-grown stag beetle larvae to form cocoons and eventually metamorphose into their adult form. Maturity is fleeting, however, lasting just long enough for the beetles to find and fight for a mate.
Epic skirmishes over mates are the final act of a stag beetle’s short adult life.
So-named because their massive jaws resemble a stag’s antlers, these beetles swing, snap, and pinch their appendages to dislodge competing males and access nearby female beetles. The size of a beetle and its mandibles is largely dependent upon the quality and quantity of nutrition they absorb as larvae.
You might think that larger mandibles and a bulkier body would give a male beetle an advantage in battle, and this is often the case. Yet a Nature study published in October showed that, while larger beetles fared better in ritualized ground fights, smaller European stag beetles have turned to an alternative mating technique that favors their superior agility and wing strength: mating in mid flight.
Studying dozens of beetle battles at the dead of night—when they are most sexually active—scientists documented the first known instance of smaller male stag beetles flying and grasping females in mid-air, avoiding the iconic ground battles that played out in Ivanenko’s winning shot.
As ever in nature, courtship is a risky endeavor, requiring an edge and a dose of perseverance. 
Lead photo: Two stag beetles (Lucanus cervus) battle for dominance; Voronezh region, Russia.
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