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Demographic Consequences of Descrimination among Conspecific Host Plants by Battus Philenor Butterflies
Author(s) -
Rausher Mark D.,
Papaj Daniel R.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.144
H-Index - 294
eISSN - 1939-9170
pISSN - 0012-9658
DOI - 10.2307/1937494
Subject(s) - biology , host (biology) , biological dispersal , larva , ecology , lepidoptera genitalia , insect , population , demography , sociology
Ovipositing Battus philenor butterflies discriminate among conspecific host plants in the field. Discrimination has no detectable effect on larval growth rates or on predispersal mortality but does appear to enhance larval survival by increasing larval size at dispersal. A comparison of these results with those of a previous study suggests that the effects of discrimination among conspecific hosts on larval survival are similar in magnitude to analogous effects of discrimination between host species. The results of this study suggest that models and discussions of the evolution of host selection behavior that treat plant species as the unit of discrimination may be seriously flawed because they overlook significant aspects of insect behavior.