First in, last out: asymmetric competition influences patch exploitation of a parasitoid. - INRAE - Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Année : 2011

First in, last out: asymmetric competition influences patch exploitation of a parasitoid.

Résumé

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. Key words: differential arrival, exploitative competition, foraging behavior, interference, parasitic wasp, war of attrition.

Dates et versions

hal-00597352 , version 1 (31-05-2011)

Identifiants

Citer

Cécile Le Lann, Yannick Outreman, Jacques J.M. van Alphen, Joan van Baaren. First in, last out: asymmetric competition influences patch exploitation of a parasitoid.. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2011, 22 (1), pp.101-107. ⟨10.1093/beheco/arq180⟩. ⟨hal-00597352⟩
373 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More