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The Effects of Aphid Traits on Parasitoid Host Use and Specialist Advantage

Specialization is a central concept in ecology and one of the fundamental properties of parasitoids. Highly specialized parasitoids tend to be more efficient in host-use compared to generalized parasitoids, presumably owing to the trade-off between host range and host-use efficiency. However, it rem...

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Autores principales: Gagic, Vesna, Petrović-Obradović, Olivera, Fründ, Jochen, Kavallieratos, Nickolas G., Athanassiou, Christos G., Starý, Petr, Tomanović, Željko
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4910996/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27309729
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157674
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author Gagic, Vesna
Petrović-Obradović, Olivera
Fründ, Jochen
Kavallieratos, Nickolas G.
Athanassiou, Christos G.
Starý, Petr
Tomanović, Željko
author_facet Gagic, Vesna
Petrović-Obradović, Olivera
Fründ, Jochen
Kavallieratos, Nickolas G.
Athanassiou, Christos G.
Starý, Petr
Tomanović, Željko
author_sort Gagic, Vesna
collection PubMed
description Specialization is a central concept in ecology and one of the fundamental properties of parasitoids. Highly specialized parasitoids tend to be more efficient in host-use compared to generalized parasitoids, presumably owing to the trade-off between host range and host-use efficiency. However, it remains unknown how parasitoid host specificity and host-use depends on host traits related to susceptibility to parasitoid attack. To address this question, we used data from a 13-year survey of interactions among 142 aphid and 75 parasitoid species in nine European countries. We found that only aphid traits related to local resource characteristics seem to influence the trade-off between host-range and efficiency: more specialized parasitoids had an apparent advantage (higher abundance on shared hosts) on aphids with sparse colonies, ant-attendance and without concealment, and this was more evident when host relatedness was included in calculation of parasitoid specificity. More traits influenced average assemblage specialization, which was highest in aphids that are monophagous, monoecious, large, highly mobile (easily drop from a plant), without myrmecophily, habitat specialists, inhabit non-agricultural habitats and have sparse colonies. Differences in aphid wax production did not influence parasitoid host specificity and host-use. Our study is the first step in identifying host traits important for aphid parasitoid host specificity and host-use and improves our understanding of bottom-up effects of aphid traits on aphid-parasitoid food web structure.
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spelling pubmed-49109962016-07-06 The Effects of Aphid Traits on Parasitoid Host Use and Specialist Advantage Gagic, Vesna Petrović-Obradović, Olivera Fründ, Jochen Kavallieratos, Nickolas G. Athanassiou, Christos G. Starý, Petr Tomanović, Željko PLoS One Research Article Specialization is a central concept in ecology and one of the fundamental properties of parasitoids. Highly specialized parasitoids tend to be more efficient in host-use compared to generalized parasitoids, presumably owing to the trade-off between host range and host-use efficiency. However, it remains unknown how parasitoid host specificity and host-use depends on host traits related to susceptibility to parasitoid attack. To address this question, we used data from a 13-year survey of interactions among 142 aphid and 75 parasitoid species in nine European countries. We found that only aphid traits related to local resource characteristics seem to influence the trade-off between host-range and efficiency: more specialized parasitoids had an apparent advantage (higher abundance on shared hosts) on aphids with sparse colonies, ant-attendance and without concealment, and this was more evident when host relatedness was included in calculation of parasitoid specificity. More traits influenced average assemblage specialization, which was highest in aphids that are monophagous, monoecious, large, highly mobile (easily drop from a plant), without myrmecophily, habitat specialists, inhabit non-agricultural habitats and have sparse colonies. Differences in aphid wax production did not influence parasitoid host specificity and host-use. Our study is the first step in identifying host traits important for aphid parasitoid host specificity and host-use and improves our understanding of bottom-up effects of aphid traits on aphid-parasitoid food web structure. Public Library of Science 2016-06-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4910996/ /pubmed/27309729 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157674 Text en © 2016 Gagic 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Gagic, Vesna
Petrović-Obradović, Olivera
Fründ, Jochen
Kavallieratos, Nickolas G.
Athanassiou, Christos G.
Starý, Petr
Tomanović, Željko
The Effects of Aphid Traits on Parasitoid Host Use and Specialist Advantage
title The Effects of Aphid Traits on Parasitoid Host Use and Specialist Advantage
title_full The Effects of Aphid Traits on Parasitoid Host Use and Specialist Advantage
title_fullStr The Effects of Aphid Traits on Parasitoid Host Use and Specialist Advantage
title_full_unstemmed The Effects of Aphid Traits on Parasitoid Host Use and Specialist Advantage
title_short The Effects of Aphid Traits on Parasitoid Host Use and Specialist Advantage
title_sort effects of aphid traits on parasitoid host use and specialist advantage
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4910996/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27309729
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0157674
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