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Different Oviposition Strategies of Closely Related Damselfly Species as an Effective Defense against Parasitoids

Parasitoidism is one of the main causes of insect egg mortality. Parasitoids are often able to detect eggs using semiochemicals released from eggs and disturbed plants. In response, female insects adopt a wide variety of oviposition strategies to reduce the detectability of eggs and subsequent morta...

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Autores principales: Harabiš, Filip, Rusková, Tereza, Dolný, Aleš
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6358902/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30634623
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10010026
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author Harabiš, Filip
Rusková, Tereza
Dolný, Aleš
author_facet Harabiš, Filip
Rusková, Tereza
Dolný, Aleš
author_sort Harabiš, Filip
collection PubMed
description Parasitoidism is one of the main causes of insect egg mortality. Parasitoids are often able to detect eggs using semiochemicals released from eggs and disturbed plants. In response, female insects adopt a wide variety of oviposition strategies to reduce the detectability of eggs and subsequent mortality. We evaluated the proportion of parasitized and undeveloped eggs of three common damselfly species from the family Lestidae, the most diverse group of European damselflies, in terms of oviposition strategies, notably clutch patterning and the ability to utilize oviposition substrates with different mechanical properties. We assumed that higher costs associated with some oviposition strategies will be balanced by lower egg mortality. We found that the ability of Chalcolestes viridis to oviposit into very stiff substrates brings benefit in the form of a significantly lower rate of parasitoidism and lower proportion of undeveloped eggs. The fundamentally different phenology of Sympecma fusca and/or their ability to utilize dead plants as oviposition substrate resulted in eggs that were completely free of parasitoids. Our results indicated that ovipositing into substrates that are unsuitable for most damselfly species significantly reduces egg mortality. Notably, none of these oviposition strategies would work unless combined with other adaptations, such as prolonging the duration of the prolarval life stage or the ability to oviposit into stiff tissue.
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spelling pubmed-63589022019-02-12 Different Oviposition Strategies of Closely Related Damselfly Species as an Effective Defense against Parasitoids Harabiš, Filip Rusková, Tereza Dolný, Aleš Insects Article Parasitoidism is one of the main causes of insect egg mortality. Parasitoids are often able to detect eggs using semiochemicals released from eggs and disturbed plants. In response, female insects adopt a wide variety of oviposition strategies to reduce the detectability of eggs and subsequent mortality. We evaluated the proportion of parasitized and undeveloped eggs of three common damselfly species from the family Lestidae, the most diverse group of European damselflies, in terms of oviposition strategies, notably clutch patterning and the ability to utilize oviposition substrates with different mechanical properties. We assumed that higher costs associated with some oviposition strategies will be balanced by lower egg mortality. We found that the ability of Chalcolestes viridis to oviposit into very stiff substrates brings benefit in the form of a significantly lower rate of parasitoidism and lower proportion of undeveloped eggs. The fundamentally different phenology of Sympecma fusca and/or their ability to utilize dead plants as oviposition substrate resulted in eggs that were completely free of parasitoids. Our results indicated that ovipositing into substrates that are unsuitable for most damselfly species significantly reduces egg mortality. Notably, none of these oviposition strategies would work unless combined with other adaptations, such as prolonging the duration of the prolarval life stage or the ability to oviposit into stiff tissue. MDPI 2019-01-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6358902/ /pubmed/30634623 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10010026 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Harabiš, Filip
Rusková, Tereza
Dolný, Aleš
Different Oviposition Strategies of Closely Related Damselfly Species as an Effective Defense against Parasitoids
title Different Oviposition Strategies of Closely Related Damselfly Species as an Effective Defense against Parasitoids
title_full Different Oviposition Strategies of Closely Related Damselfly Species as an Effective Defense against Parasitoids
title_fullStr Different Oviposition Strategies of Closely Related Damselfly Species as an Effective Defense against Parasitoids
title_full_unstemmed Different Oviposition Strategies of Closely Related Damselfly Species as an Effective Defense against Parasitoids
title_short Different Oviposition Strategies of Closely Related Damselfly Species as an Effective Defense against Parasitoids
title_sort different oviposition strategies of closely related damselfly species as an effective defense against parasitoids
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6358902/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30634623
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10010026
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