Cannibalistic siblicide in praying mantis nymphs (Miomantis caffra)

Fea, Murray; Stanley, Margaret C.; Holwell, Gregory I.

doi:10.1007/s10164-013-0391-z

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Staying without cannibalising will result in starvation, and dispersing means losing the possibility to cannibalise, hence, different dispersal strategies can result in different levels of cannibalism. A similar choice between staying or dispersing and cannibalising or not is found in solitary predators that have a transient gregarious life stage, such as hatching spiderlings (Lesne et al 2016), praying mantises (Fea et al 2014), toads (Child et al 2008) and coccinellids (Michaud and Grant 2004). Hence, dispersal and cannibalism are behaviours that often occur under the same circumstances, and selection on one type of behaviour can therefore affect the other (Rudolf et al 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Males cannibalise and females disperse in the predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis

et al. 2020

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Cannibalism is a widespread phenomenon in nature, often occurring when food is scarce, for example among predators that have overexploited a local prey population. Instead of cannibalising, predators can disperse, thereby avoiding being cannibalised or cannibalising related conspecifics, which results in inclusive fitness loss. Theory on prey exploitation in ephemeral predator-prey systems predicts that predators may be selected to display prudent predation by dispersing early, thus saving food for their remaining offspring. This is especially advantageous when average relatedness in the local population is high. Less prudent predators refrain from dispersing until all prey are exterminated. These prey exploitation strategies may also have repercussions for cannibalism, especially when it is driven by food shortage. We therefore investigated to what extent adult females and males cannibalise or disperse after prey have been exterminated locally. We used two lines of the haplodiploid predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis that were selected for early and late dispersal, respectively. In wind tunnels, we observed the cannibalistic and dispersal behaviour of individual adult predators of these lines on a rose leaf with only conspecific larvae as food. Both selection lines behaved similarly, indicating that selection on dispersal behaviour did not result in correlated effects on cannibalism behaviour. Male predators stayed significantly longer on the leaf and engaged more often in cannibalism than females. The results suggest that there might be gender-specific differences in cannibalistic tendency in relation to dispersal. Future theoretical studies on the evolution of cannibalism and dispersal should take differences between the genders into account.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Males cannibalise and females disperse in the predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis

et al. 2020

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“…Infections caused by maternally inherited bacteria occur in at least 50% of arthropod species (Weinert et al 2015, Sanaei et al 2021. As these bacteria cannot be transmitted by males, males represent evolutionary 'dead ends' with the potential to hinder the fitness of their female siblings via costly competitive interactions (Engelstädter and Hurst 2009, Fea et al 2014). Thus, many maternally inherited…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on the epidemiology of male‐killing bacteria

Fisher

Knell

Price

et al. 2022

Oikos

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Many arthropod species are vulnerable to infection by bacteria that kill the male offspring of their female hosts. These male-killing bacteria (MKB) can greatly impact the ecology and evolution of their hosts, particularly when MKB prevalence is high and persistent through time. However, we still do not have a holistic understanding of the key determinants of MKB ecological epidemiology, particularly regarding the interplay between host-MKB traits and environmental conditions. Here, we derived a mathematical model to analyse the role that several intrinsic and extrinsic factors play in determining MKB epidemiology, and how these factors interact with one another. We found that the invasion threshold and prevalence of MKB is determined by transmission rate and the rate at which female hosts recover from MKB infections. The invasion and prevalence of MKB is also highly sensitive to the extent that MKB can reduce intra-brood competition by killing male offspring. Environmentally-induced periodic changes to the epidemiological characteristics of MKB caused a sharp decline and a slow recovery of MKB prevalence and, in some cases, environmental disturbance can drive MKB extinct. Furthermore, the magnitude of the impact that environmental disturbance had on the dynamics of MKB prevalence was heavily modulated by intrinsic factors, particularly intra-brood competition. This is the first study to explore how both intrinsic and extrinsic factors interact to influence the dynamics of MKB infections over large timescales; our findings are central to predicting the current and future impacts of MKB on host populations.

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“…Also known as conspecific necrophagy (Anderson, 2011), the consumption of conspecifics may be adaptive under some circumstances as it provides access to high‐quality proteins, lipids, micronutrients, vitamins, and minerals (Milton, 2003; Snyder, 2000). However, this practice also has associated risks, such as pathogen transmission (Lindenbaum, 1979; Pfennig et al., 1998; Rudolf & Antonovics, 2007), possible minor or fatal injuries (Polis, 1981), and decreased inclusive fitness if the victim is a relative (Fea et al., 2014; Pfennig, 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%