TY - JOUR
T1 - Effect of wasp size, physiological state, and prior host experience on host-searching behavior in a parasitoid wasp (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae)
AU - Ueno, Kanako
AU - Ueno, Takatoshi
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. This work was supported partly by grant no. 13760039 from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japan.
PY - 2005/1
Y1 - 2005/1
N2 - Host-searching behavior in insects generally varies among individuals. A number of physiological and environmental factors can be involved in such individual variation. Here, a series of behavioral observations were made to highlight the importance of physiological state (i.e., number of mature eggs a female carries, amount of nutrient reserves, etc.) and learning state (i.e., prior host experience) on host-approaching behavior of parasitoids. Itoplectis naranyae (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae), a solitary endoparasitoid wasp attacking lepidopteran pupae and prepupae, was used as a test insect. The results show that female wasps with experience ovipositing on hosts 2 days before the test found hosts more quickly than did naïve wasps. Prior experience of host odor itself did not affect host-finding behavior, however. A single oviposition was enough for wasps to shorten time to find a host; additional experience had no significant effect on the efficiency of searching. The number of mature eggs a female carried had no effect on the time required to find a host regardless of prior host experience. The size of wasps, instead, was a significant factor when wasps had no prior host experience, and larger wasps found hosts more rapidly than did smaller wasps. Searching activity was not affected by how many hosts a female wasp had fed on before testing.
AB - Host-searching behavior in insects generally varies among individuals. A number of physiological and environmental factors can be involved in such individual variation. Here, a series of behavioral observations were made to highlight the importance of physiological state (i.e., number of mature eggs a female carries, amount of nutrient reserves, etc.) and learning state (i.e., prior host experience) on host-approaching behavior of parasitoids. Itoplectis naranyae (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae), a solitary endoparasitoid wasp attacking lepidopteran pupae and prepupae, was used as a test insect. The results show that female wasps with experience ovipositing on hosts 2 days before the test found hosts more quickly than did naïve wasps. Prior experience of host odor itself did not affect host-finding behavior, however. A single oviposition was enough for wasps to shorten time to find a host; additional experience had no significant effect on the efficiency of searching. The number of mature eggs a female carried had no effect on the time required to find a host regardless of prior host experience. The size of wasps, instead, was a significant factor when wasps had no prior host experience, and larger wasps found hosts more rapidly than did smaller wasps. Searching activity was not affected by how many hosts a female wasp had fed on before testing.
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U2 - 10.1007/s10164-004-0126-2
DO - 10.1007/s10164-004-0126-2
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:13844299863
SN - 0289-0771
VL - 23
SP - 43
EP - 49
JO - Journal of Ethology
JF - Journal of Ethology
IS - 1
ER -