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A TRADE‐OFF FOR HOST PLANT UTILIZATION IN THE BLACK BEAN APHID, APHIS FABAE
Author(s) -
Mackenzie Aulay
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1996.tb04482.x
Subject(s) - biology , aphis , aphid , sympatric speciation , host (biology) , population , aphididae , ecology , homoptera , botany , pest analysis , demography , sociology
Many studies on insect herbivores have sought to find trade‐offs between utilization of alternate host plants, both to understand the prevalence of specialization and to appreciate the likelihood of sympatric speciation due to disruptive selection. To date, few studies have found trade‐offs. Seventy‐seven clones of the black bean aphid, Aphis fabae , were collected from field sites in East Anglia, U.K., over an area of about 10,000 km 2 . These clones exhibit a trade‐off in fitness between two alternative hosts, broad bean and nasturtium. This pattern is maintained in the F2 generation. The predominance of broad bean in the area, the fact that clones were only sampled from one of these two hosts, and the absence of “master‐of‐all‐trades” genotypes after recombination all point to the importance of antagonistic pleiotropy rather than linkage disequilibrium in maintaining this trade‐off. It is concluded that this population presents strong evidence for a fundamental trade‐off for host utilization.