Adaptive preferential selection of female coccinellid hosts by the parasitoid wasp Dinocampus coccinellae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae)

Title:

Adaptive preferential selection of female coccinellid hosts by the parasitoid wasp Dinocampus coccinellae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae)

Creator:

Davis, Dexter S., Stewart, Sarah L. , Manica, Andrea, and Majerus, Michael E.N.

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:0ae74ac9-381a-4943-930a-a4b1b93ca620
uuid:0ae74ac9-381a-4943-930a-a4b1b93ca620

Subject:

Parasitoidism, host discrimination, host sex, Dinocampus coccinellae, Braconidae, Coccinella septempunctata, and Coccinellidae

Type:

article, model:article, and TEXT

Description:

Females of the parasitoid wasp Dinocampus coccinellae are known to parasitise both male and female coccinellid hosts. It is suggested that female hosts provide more resources for developing wasp larvae because they tend to be larger than male hosts, and female coccinellids have a much greater food intake than males. Thus the wasp's lifetime reproductive success should be increased by ovipositing preferentially in female rather than male hosts when given a choice. Laboratory experiments, using Coccinella septempunctata as a host, show that such a preference does exist. Wasps preferentially oviposit in females, and this preference is not simply a result of the larger mean size of females compared to males. These results corroborate higher rates of prevalence in female compared to male hosts reported previously.

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
policy:public

Source:

European Journal of Entomology | 2006 Volume:103 | Number:1

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false