Detailed look at paralysis of hosts by the ectoparasitoid Habrobracon hebetor (Hymenoptera: Braconidae): does more efficient paralysis mean more effective parasitism?

Cantori, Lucas Vinicius; Garcia, Alício Rosalino; Pinto, Alexandre de Sene; Godoy, Wesley Augusto Conde; Parra, José Roberto Postali

doi:10.1007/s10526-022-10165-3

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For parasitoids, the host serves as a vital source of food for their offspring, and the pupal chamber of the host serves as a suitable shelter. When the parasitoids sting and paralyze the host, it will be actively attacked and hurt by the host [3,6,33], leading to behavioral aggression, chemical and physical defense, and increased risk intensity with host size and developmental progress [34,35]. Parasitoids need to identify these imminent risks and balance the contradiction between mortality risk, resource utilization efficiency, and the maximum possibility of population reproduction [27,36].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptive Reproductive Strategies of an Ectoparasitoid Sclerodermus guani under the Stress of Its Entomopathogenic Fungus Beauveria bassiana

Wang

Pan

et al. 2023

Insects

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Complex interspecific relationships between parasites and their insect hosts involve multiple factors and are affected by their ecological and evolutionary context. A parasitoid Sclerodermus guani (Hymenoptera: Bethylidae) and an entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana (Hypocreales: Cordycipitaceae) shared the same host in nature, Monochamus alternatus (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae). They often encountered the semi-enclosed microhabitat of the host larvae or pupae. We tested the survival and reproduction of the parasitoid’s parent and its offspring fitness under different concentrations of B. bassiana suspension. The results show that S. guani parent females carrying higher concentrations of the pathogen shorten the pre-reproductive time and regulate their own fertility and their offspring’s survival and development. This minimal model of the interspecific interactions contains three dimensionless parameters, vulnerability (θ), dilution ratio (δ), and PR, which were used to evaluate the mortality effect of the parasitoid S. guani on its host M. alternatus under the stress of the entomopathogenic fungus B. bassiana. We compared the infection and lethal effect of the fungus B. bassiana with different concentrations to the parasitoid S. guani and the host larvae M. alternatus. At higher concentrations of the pathogen, the parasitoid parent females shorten the pre-reproductive time and regulate their own fertility and their offspring’s survival and development. At moderate concentrations of the pathogen, however, the ability of the parasitoid to exploit the host is more flexible and efficient, possibly reflecting the potential interspecific interactions between the two parasites which were able to coexist and communicate with their hosts in ecological contexts (with a high overlap in time and space) and cause interspecific competition and intraguild predation.

show abstract