Egg Size and Reproductive Allocation in the Pitcherplant Mosquito Wyeomyia smithii (Diptera: Culicidae)

Bradshaw, William E.; Holzapfel, Christina; O'Neill, Timothy

doi:10.1093/jmedent/30.2.384

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…In some invertebrates, fecundity (or egg production) increases with body size (Collins 1980, So and Dudgeon 1989, Hines 1991, Shields 1991, Bradshaw and Holzapfel 1993, Hart 1996. In B. triarticulata, adult body size had no effect on total reproductive output (measured as number of eggs produced) of females raised on either diet.…”

Section: Life History Effects Of Food Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Life History Consequences of Food Quality in the Freshwater Copepod Boeckella triarticulata

Twombly¹,

Clancy²,

Burns³

1998

Ecology

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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Ecological Society of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ecology.Abstract. Food quality often has profound effects on life history traits and individual fitness, altering rates of growth and development, changing the timing of reproduction, and shifting the trade-off between egg size and egg number. Few data are available on the effects of food quality on copepod life history traits. We measured several life history traits on a large number of individuals to document the effects of food quality on individual traits, on life history correlates, and on a composite measure of individual fitness in the freshwater copepod Boeckella triarticulata Thomson. Nauplii were raised individually on two diets: one consisted of the high quality alga Cryptomonas sp. (abbreviated as CR), and the second diet consisted of a combination of Cryptomonas sp. and the low quality cyanobacterium Anabaena flos-aquae (CA). The mixed CA diet slowed growth and development so that individuals raised on this diet were older and smaller at metamorphosis and maturity. Despite these effects, there were no differences between diets in survival to maturity, and male copepods raised on the mixed diet lived significantly longer than females or than either sex raised on Cryptomonas alone. Females raised on the mixed diet produced more and larger clutches than those raised on CR, so that total egg production increased on this diet, although large intradiet variation obscured statistical differences between diets in these parameters. Intradiet variation was due to a large range in the number of clutches produced by individual females: some individuals produced 10-15 clutches, contradicting previous descriptions of this species as semelparous. Although diet affected age at first reproduction, it had no significant effect on individual fitness, estimated as X. Boeckella triarticulata achieved high fitness either by minimizing age at first reproduction (CR diet) or by increasing reproductive output (CA diet). Data collected from cast-off exuviae allow nondestructive measures of individual life history traits along with a composite measure of individual fitness. Combining these two analyses is an important step in unraveling life history correlates and in identifying the selective forces driving life history evolution in these crustaceans.

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Section: Life History Effects Of Food Qualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Life History Consequences of Food Quality in the Freshwater Copepod Boeckella triarticulata

Twombly¹,

Clancy²,

Burns³

1998

Ecology

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“…Although they will feed on sugar solutions or raisins in the laboratory (Price 1958, Istock et al 1975), they need not do so to produce eggs and they may not feed in nature (lstock et al 1975(lstock et al , O'Meara et al 1981. Because all resources for reproduction are accumulated in the larval stage, larval mass is a predictor of lifetime reproductive performance for both mosquitoes (lstock et al 1975, Moeur and Istock 1980, Farkas and Brust 1985, Bradshaw et al 1993) and midges (Wiens 1972). Adult midges do not feed at all (Wiens 1972).…”

Section: Organisms and Study Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Pitcher‐Plant Midges and Mosquitoes: A Processing Chain Commensalism

Heard¹

1994

Ecology

131

155

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Larvae of the midge Metriocnemus knabi and of the mosquito Wyeomyia smithii are found only inside the water-filled leaves of the carnivorous pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea, where they feed on decaying invertebrate carcasses. I examined the interaction between the two species in a natural population in western Newfoundland, Canada.Experimental manipulations of rates of prey capture by pitcher-plant leaves indicated that both insect species are limited by carcass supply. However, the interaction between them is commensal rather than competitive. Midge growth was unaffected by experimental quadrupling of mosquito density in otherwise unmanipulated leaves. Mosquito growth, on the other hand, increased with midge density in both natural leaves and artificial leaf microcosms.This interaction is an example of a processing chain commensalism. Although both species feed on carcass material, they use it in different stages of decay: midges feed by chewing on solid material, while mosquitoes filter-feed on particles derived from the decaying matter. Consumption of particles by mosquitoes does not affect resource availability for midges, but feeding by midges does influence particle availability. In artificial leaf microcosms, high bacterial densities occurred sooner in artificial leaves with midges present than in identical leaves without them. Bacteria are a direct food source for mosquitoes, and high bacterial densities also indicate that other organic material is being comminuted, providing particles for mosquitoes and surface area for bacterial growth. Although midges remove some of the carcass resource that also limits mosquitoes, their net effect on mosquitoes is positive because they accelerate conversion ofthe remaining resource to particles.

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“…Such relationships also appear to be largely absent in blood-sucking dipterans (e.g. Bradshaw et al, 1993). One reason for these contrasting among-taxa patterns could be the provisioning of resources for egg maturation (Fox and Czesak, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reproductive consequences of female size in haematophagous ectoparasites

Kiefer

Warburton

Khokhlova

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Biology

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To test relationships between maternal size, egg size and size of new offspring, we studied (a) the effect of maternal size on egg size and number, and maternal survival after oviposition and (b) the effect of egg size on the duration of development and new imago size in three flea species (Xenopsylla ramesis, Synosternus cleopatrae, Parapulex chephrenis) with varying host and habitat specificity. In general, the number and size of eggs as well as total egg volume appeared to be independent of maternal body size. There was no trade-off between egg number and size. However, female body size was related to post-oviposition survival, with larger females surviving longer after oviposition than smaller females. In addition, females that produced more eggs died faster after oviposition in X. ramesis but not in the two other species. There were no significant size differences between eggs that developed into new imagoes and eggs that did not survive. Survivorship of male and female eggs did not differ; however, new adult females were significantly larger than new adult males. Female, but not male, new imagoes exhibited a significant positive relationship between egg size and duration of preimaginal development in all three species, with larger eggs developing faster than smaller eggs. In X. ramesis and S. cleopatrae, faster developing eggs also developed into larger new imagoes. We conclude that these patterns were largely consistent among the three flea species, suggesting that they result from the same mechanisms and are weakly affected by the ecological specialization of a given species.

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Egg Size and Reproductive Allocation in the Pitcherplant Mosquito Wyeomyia smithii (Diptera: Culicidae)

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Life History Consequences of Food Quality in the Freshwater Copepod Boeckella triarticulata

Life History Consequences of Food Quality in the Freshwater Copepod Boeckella triarticulata

Pitcher‐Plant Midges and Mosquitoes: A Processing Chain Commensalism

Reproductive consequences of female size in haematophagous ectoparasites

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