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Temporal patterns of food‐availability and their effect on Tribolium populations
Author(s) -
Wool David,
Sverdlov Eliyahu
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
population ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.819
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1438-390X
pISSN - 1438-3896
DOI - 10.1007/bf02512977
Subject(s) - biomass (ecology) , biology , productivity , limiting , population , mating , ecology , zoology , demography , mechanical engineering , sociology , engineering , economics , macroeconomics
Summary The effects of two temporal food‐availability regimes were examined on populations of flour beetles ( Tribolium ): (1) Food given once only and never renewed; (2) Food added in fixed intervals. In Case 1 there was a single peak in population size (and biomass) followed by a slow decline. The amount of biomass and numbers of adults produced were inversely related to the number of adult founders. In Case 2, the production of adults and biomass was not proportional to the amount of food; thus food was not the limiting factor in the experimental populations. The effect of medium conditioning may have been important in limiting population growth. Differences in productivity among the strains in Case 2 reflected their relative genetic variability following different mating systems in their past history. A measure of the food cost of maintaining 1g of biomass for 1 day (MC) is suggested. All strains showed a rather uniform MC, approximately 0.1g flour/1g biomass/day, except in the growth phase when most of the biomass was larval biomass. During this phase, food is utilized not only for metabolism but also for building new tissues, and the energy requirement must be higher.