Short-term indirect interactions between two moth (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) species mediated by shared parasitoids: The benefit of being scarce

Title:

Short-term indirect interactions between two moth (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) species mediated by shared parasitoids: The benefit of being scarce

Creator:

Teder, Tiit and Tammaru, Toomas

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:d591ae9e-30d9-4d54-8190-79eefb7761b7
uuid:d591ae9e-30d9-4d54-8190-79eefb7761b7

Subject:

Parasitoids, indirect effects, apparent competition, coexistence, host preference, frequency dependence, Ichneumonidae, Noctuidae, Nonagria typhae, and Archanara sparganii

Type:

article, model:article, and TEXT

Description:

Despite the impact of parasitoids on insect populations being extensively studied, indirect parasitoid-mediated effects remain rarely documented in natural communities. We examined the influence of shared parasitoids on the interactions between two functionally monophagous moths, Nonagria typhae and Archanara sparganii. The moths showed a considerable variation in terms of relative abundance and the degree of phenological synchrony between the species. On average, parasitism levels caused by shared parasitoids did not differ between the two host species. Relative parasitism levels of the two hosts, however, varied considerably among different samples. Percentage parasitism of the scarcer species, A. sparganii, thus could not be fully explained by that of the dominant species, N. typhae. The results indicated that A. sparganii may benefit from the presence of N. typhae. In particular, both low relative density as well as high phenological synchrony with N. typhae reduced parasitism levels in A. sparganii. The case thus indicates the presence of parasitoid-mediated indirect effects between the coexisting herbivores. The patterns of host use observed in this study are consistent with the scenario of frequency-dependent host use caused by changes in parasitoid behavior. Such a host use by parasitoids is suggested to promote numerical stability and coexistence of the moth species in the system studied.

Language:

English

Rights:

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

Source:

European Journal of Entomology | 2003 Volume:100 | Number:3

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false