Effect of female size on host selection by a koinobiont insect parasitoid (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Aphidiinae)

Title:

Effect of female size on host selection by a koinobiont insect parasitoid (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Aphidiinae)

Creator:

Lykouressis, Dionyssios, Garantonakis, Nikolaos, Perdikis, Dionyssios, Fantinou, Argyro, and Mauromoustakos, Andronikos

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:a6892fb4-686c-41e0-89ac-74d0f906145e
uuid:a6892fb4-686c-41e0-89ac-74d0f906145e

Subject:

Hymenoptera, Braconidae, Aphidius colemani, Hemiptera, Aphis gossypii, Myzus persicae, aphid, body size, and host selection

Type:

article, model:article, and TEXT

Description:

Body size is a main fitness component of insect parasitoids. We assessed the potential influence of maternal size of the parasitoid wasp Aphidius colemani Viereck (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Aphidiinae) on its ability to parasitize the different instars of Aphis gossypii Glover (Hemiptera: Aphididae) on eggplant and cucumber. In the experiments "small" vs "large" parasitoid females were used. Females oviposited in all instars but more of the smaller hosts were parasitized. Host selection was affected by female size and the larger hosts were more frequently mummified by the large than the small females. Thus, parasitoid female size influenced host selection. This could affect the potential of the parasitoid to exploit populations of aphids that differ in their size structure. The importance of these results in terms of the ecological adaptations of the parasitoid and their implication for biological control are discussed.

Language:

English

Rights:

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

Source:

European Journal of Entomology | 2009 Volume:106 | Number:3

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false