Back to Search
Start Over
First in, last out: asymmetric competition influences patch exploitation of a parasitoid.
- Source :
-
Behavioral Ecology . Jan2011, Vol. 22 Issue 1, p101-107. 7p. 3 Charts, 3 Graphs. - Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- Parasitoid females exploiting a patchy environment may encounter conspecifics on the host patches they visit or arrive in patches where other females have already parasitized hosts. When 2 or more foragers with differential arrivals exploit a resource patch simultaneously, the solution for the evolutionary stable patch residence times is the outcome of an asymmetric war of attrition. A theoretical prediction is that the forager that arrives first should stay longer than those arriving later, as a result of a resource value asymmetry. This study aims to examine how the arrival order on a host patch affects patch time in the solitary aphid parasitoid Aphidius ervi. For this purpose, 3 situations of competition were tested: single individuals foraging on unexploited patches (no competition), individuals foraging on previously exploited patches, and individuals exploiting patches in the presence of a competitor. Our data confirm the theoretical prediction: first-arriving females stay longer on a patch of hosts than second-arriving females. Neither host rejections nor host attacks affect patch-leaving decisions of females, but foraging with a competitor and previous encounters with a competitor increase the patch residence time of first-arriving females. This experiment is the first to test the effect of arrival order on patch exploitation strategies in nonfighting species. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Subjects :
- *FORAGING behavior
*PARASITIC wasps
*PARASITOIDS
*APHIDIUS
*PREDATION
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 10452249
- Volume :
- 22
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Behavioral Ecology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 59229487
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arq180