Improvements in the biological control of agricultural pests require improvements in the phenotyping methods used by practitioners to select efficient biological control agent (BCA) populations in industrial rearing or field conditions. Consistent inter-individual variations in behaviour (i.e. animal personality) probably affect BCA efficiency, but have never been taken into account in the development of phenotyping methods, despite having characteristics useful for phenotyping: repeatable (by definition), often heritable, etc. We developed a video-tracking method targeting animal personality traits and evaluated the feasibility of its use for genetic improvement in the BCA Trichogramma evanescens, by phenotyping 1,049 individuals from 24 isogenic lines. We found consistent individual variations in boldness, activity and exploration. Personality differences between the 24 isogenic lines suggested a genetic origin of the variations in activity and exploration (broad-sense heritability estimates of 0.06 to 0.11) and revealed a trade-off between exploration and fecundity.
Improvements in the biological control of agricultural pests require improvements in the phenotyping methods used by practitioners to select efficient biological control agent (BCA) populations in industrial rearing or field conditions. Consistent inter-individual variations in behaviour (i.e. animal personality) probably affect BCA efficiency, but have never been taken into account in the development of phenotyping methods, despite having characteristics useful for phenotyping: repeatable (by definition), often heritable, etc. We developed a video-tracking method targeting animal personality traits and evaluated the feasibility of its use for genetic improvement in the BCA Trichogramma evanescens, by phenotyping 1,049 individuals from 24 isogenic lines. We found consistent individual variations in boldness, activity and exploration. Personality differences between the 24 isogenic lines suggested a genetic origin of the variations in activity and exploration (broad-sense heritability estimates of 0.06 to 0.11) and revealed a trade-off between exploration and fecundity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.