Effects of maternal nutrition and egg provisioning on parameters of larval hatch, survival and dispersal in the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar L.

Abstract

North American gypsy moths disperse as newly hatched larvae on wind currents in a behavior called ballooning. Because ballooning occurs before neonates begin to feed, resources used in dispersal are limited to those carried over from the egg. We show that nutritional experience of the maternal parent can influence the tendency of offspring to disperse, and that resource provisioning of eggs by the maternal parent affects the duration of the window for disperal. Offspring of females from defoliated sites had a lower tendency to balloon in a wind tunnel than larvae from females which had not experienced nutritional stress associated with host defoliation. The number of eggs in an egg mass, a reflection of the maternal parent's nutritional experience, also contributed to the predictive model for dispersal that included defoliation level. Egg weight and the levels of two yolk proteins, vitellin (Vt) and glycine-rich protein (GRP), however, had no influence of the proportion of ballooning larvae. The length of survival without food, and thus the maximum period of time for dispersal, was correlated with levels of Vt and GRP, but not with egg weight. The level of defoliation at the site from which the maternal parent was collected was not related to the longevity of offspring, nor did it have a significant effect on the levels of Vt, GRP or egg weight. Levels of hemolymph proteins arylphorin and vitellogenin in the maternal parent during the prepupal stage had no influence on levels of yolk proteins, larval longevity, or tendency to balloon.

Causes and consequences of animal dispersal strategies: relating individual behaviour to spatial dynamics

“…Furthermore, the environment may be sampled at different times, both within the lifetime of the individual and in some cases, the environment of past generations may be transmitted through maternal effects (e.g. Dixon, 1985;Diss et al, 1996;Massot et al, 2002;see Ims, 1990 for a counter example). How the organism integrates the information from different environmental cues and thereby reaches its decision has largely been overlooked (Ronce et al, 2001 ;Massot et al, 2002).…”

Effects of phenological synchronization on caterpillar early-instar survival under a changing climate

“…Dispersal occurs before feeding and therefore depends on the resources in the egg acquired by the mother during her own larval stage (Diss et al 1996). Leonard (1970aLeonard ( , 1970b found that smaller eggs from dense populations produce larvae with a longer pre-feeding period and a higher activity level, even in the presence of suitable food, and suggested that these larvae have a greater tendency to disperse.…”

“…Leonard (1970aLeonard ( , 1970b found that smaller eggs from dense populations produce larvae with a longer pre-feeding period and a higher activity level, even in the presence of suitable food, and suggested that these larvae have a greater tendency to disperse. However, more recent work has failed to replicate this result (Diss et al 1996) and suggests that the most important factors in dispersalassociated mortality are host-plant synchrony and weather during dispersal, not maternal quality or population density (Erelli and Elkinton 2000).…”

Larval nutrition affects life history traits in a capital breeding moth

“…Large eggs generally have fitness advantages in Lepidoptera (Braby, 1994;Sinervo, 1993;Stearns, 1992), as they lead to greater over-winter survival [Choristoneura fumiferana (Carisey and Bauce, 2002)], higher probability of hatching [M. disstria (McCowan, 1952)] and larger, more active, caterpillars [Malacosoma pluviale (Wellington, 1965); Lymantria dispar (Diss et al, 1996)] with longer resistance to starvation [Lobesia botrana (Torres-Villa and Rodriguez-Molina, 2002)] in the next generation. In the forest tent caterpillar, larger eggs are thought to confer an advantage in cold climates, where hatchlings sometimes emerge into harsh conditions where food is not immediately available (Cooke and Roland, 2003;Parry et al, 2001).…”