Parental care and offspring survival in Pterostichus anthracinus (Coleoptera: Carabidae): an experimental study

Title:

Parental care and offspring survival in Pterostichus anthracinus (Coleoptera: Carabidae): an experimental study

Creator:

Kolesnikov, Felix N. and Karamyan, Arevik N.

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:9f196bd8-b220-4f40-9b1c-95ace5fd0e71
uuid:9f196bd8-b220-4f40-9b1c-95ace5fd0e71
doi:10.14411/eje.2019.004

Subject:

Coleoptera, Carabidae, ground beetles, Pterostichus anthracinus, parental care, presocial behaviour, subsocial behaviour, predation pressure, fungal attack, parental removal, and offspring survival

Type:

model:article and TEXT

Format:

počítač and online zdroj

Description:

Parental care in which females attend their offspring is recorded in over 30 species of ground beetles. Despite this, there is no quantitative data on the fate of the offspring when the mother is experimentally removed. This paper investigates parental care in Pterostichus anthracinus (Coleoptera: Carabidae). The objectives of the study were to estimate: (1) egg survival when the female is removed; (2) the ability of females to defend their eggs from attack by predators; (3) the ability of females to repair a damaged nest in which egg attendance takes place. In the laboratory, the reproductive activity of P. anthracinus lasted four months (from May till August) and peaked in late June. Mean (± SE) number of eggs in each clutch was 25.25 ± 2.19. All of the egg clutches were guarded by a female. Female attendance had no effect on egg mortality due to microbial attack. The duration of embryonic development lasted on average 5.2–5.3 days, and did not differ between the groups with and without maternal care. In P. anthracinus maternal care is important in preventing egg mortality due to predators. In the laboratory the percentage mortality of eggs without maternal care due to predators was 100%. In the group in which females attended their eggs, percentage mortality of offspring due to predation was about 51%. Female ability to repair damaged nests is important in preventing dehydration and reducing predation pressure. This laboratory study provides the fi rst quantitative data on the importance of maternal care in ground beetles in determining the survival of their offspring.

Language:

English

Rights:

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

Source:

European Journal of Entomology | 2019 Volume:116 | Number:1

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false