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Towards an Evolutionary Understanding of Questing Behaviour in the Tick Ixodes ricinus

The tick Ixodes ricinus finds its hosts by climbing vegetation and adopting a sit-and-wait tactic. This “questing” behaviour is known to be temperature-dependent, such that questing increases with temperature up to a point where the vapor pressure deficit (drying effect) forces ticks down to rehydra...

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Autores principales: Tomkins, Joseph L., Aungier, Jennifer, Hazel, Wade, Gilbert, Lucy
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4198204/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25333919
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110028
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author Tomkins, Joseph L.
Aungier, Jennifer
Hazel, Wade
Gilbert, Lucy
author_facet Tomkins, Joseph L.
Aungier, Jennifer
Hazel, Wade
Gilbert, Lucy
author_sort Tomkins, Joseph L.
collection PubMed
description The tick Ixodes ricinus finds its hosts by climbing vegetation and adopting a sit-and-wait tactic. This “questing” behaviour is known to be temperature-dependent, such that questing increases with temperature up to a point where the vapor pressure deficit (drying effect) forces ticks down to rehydrate in the soil or mat layer. Little if any attention has been paid to understanding the questing of ticks from an evolutionary perspective. Here we ask whether populations from colder climatic conditions respond differently in terms of the threshold temperature for questing and the rate of response to a fixed temperature. We find significant variation between populations in the temperature sensitivity of questing, with populations from cooler climates starting questing at lower temperatures than populations from warmer temperatures. Cool climate populations also quest sooner when the temperature is held constant. These patterns are consistent with local adaptation to temperature either through direct selection or acclimation and challenge the use of fixed thresholds for questing in modeling the spread of tick populations. Our results also show how both time and temperature play a role in questing, but we are unable to explain the relationship in terms of degree-time used to model Arthropod development. We find that questing in response to temperature fits well with a quantitative genetic model of the conditional strategy, which reveals how selection on questing may operate and hence may be of value in understanding the evolutionary ecology of questing.
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spelling pubmed-41982042014-10-21 Towards an Evolutionary Understanding of Questing Behaviour in the Tick Ixodes ricinus Tomkins, Joseph L. Aungier, Jennifer Hazel, Wade Gilbert, Lucy PLoS One Research Article The tick Ixodes ricinus finds its hosts by climbing vegetation and adopting a sit-and-wait tactic. This “questing” behaviour is known to be temperature-dependent, such that questing increases with temperature up to a point where the vapor pressure deficit (drying effect) forces ticks down to rehydrate in the soil or mat layer. Little if any attention has been paid to understanding the questing of ticks from an evolutionary perspective. Here we ask whether populations from colder climatic conditions respond differently in terms of the threshold temperature for questing and the rate of response to a fixed temperature. We find significant variation between populations in the temperature sensitivity of questing, with populations from cooler climates starting questing at lower temperatures than populations from warmer temperatures. Cool climate populations also quest sooner when the temperature is held constant. These patterns are consistent with local adaptation to temperature either through direct selection or acclimation and challenge the use of fixed thresholds for questing in modeling the spread of tick populations. Our results also show how both time and temperature play a role in questing, but we are unable to explain the relationship in terms of degree-time used to model Arthropod development. We find that questing in response to temperature fits well with a quantitative genetic model of the conditional strategy, which reveals how selection on questing may operate and hence may be of value in understanding the evolutionary ecology of questing. Public Library of Science 2014-10-15 /pmc/articles/PMC4198204/ /pubmed/25333919 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110028 Text en © 2014 Tomkins et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Tomkins, Joseph L.
Aungier, Jennifer
Hazel, Wade
Gilbert, Lucy
Towards an Evolutionary Understanding of Questing Behaviour in the Tick Ixodes ricinus
title Towards an Evolutionary Understanding of Questing Behaviour in the Tick Ixodes ricinus
title_full Towards an Evolutionary Understanding of Questing Behaviour in the Tick Ixodes ricinus
title_fullStr Towards an Evolutionary Understanding of Questing Behaviour in the Tick Ixodes ricinus
title_full_unstemmed Towards an Evolutionary Understanding of Questing Behaviour in the Tick Ixodes ricinus
title_short Towards an Evolutionary Understanding of Questing Behaviour in the Tick Ixodes ricinus
title_sort towards an evolutionary understanding of questing behaviour in the tick ixodes ricinus
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4198204/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25333919
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110028
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