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Early oviposition experience affects patch residence time in a foraging parasitoid
Author(s) -
Keasar Tamar,
NeyNifle Muriel,
Mangel Marc,
Swezey Sean
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
entomologia experimentalis et applicata
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.765
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1570-7458
pISSN - 0013-8703
DOI - 10.1046/j.1570-7458.2001.00766.x
Subject(s) - trichogrammatidae , parasitoid , biology , foraging , hymenoptera , lepidoptera genitalia , host (biology) , forage , kairomone , optimal foraging theory , gelechiidae , kleptoparasitism , parasitism , zoology , ecology , parasitoid wasp , braconidae
Parasitoids learn olfactory and visual cues that are associated with their hosts, and use these cues to forage more efficiently. Classical conditioning theory predicts that encounters with high‐quality hosts will lead to better learning of host‐associated cues than encounters with low‐quality hosts. We tested this prediction in a two‐phase laboratory experiment with the parasitoid Trichogramma thalense Pinto & Oatman (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) and the host Anagasta kuehniella Zeller (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae). Host quality during the first exposure to hosts affected later foraging behavior for some experimental treatments, as predicted. We used a learning model, followed by patch‐time optimization, to interpret our findings. We first simulated the parasitoids' host encounters during the experiment, and predicted their estimate of patch quality after each encounter. We then used dynamic optimization to predict the parasitoids' optimal patch residence times. The model reproduces the trends of the experimental results.