Patterns Of Reproductive Allocation

Author : German Andres Vargas Orozco
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (773 download)

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Download or read book Patterns of Reproductive Allocation in Aphidophagous Lady Beetles and Their Response to Various Levels of Resource Availability written by German Andres Vargas Orozco and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The manner in which organisms allocate reproductive resources for reproduction is a central question with respect to life history theory. The main objectives of this research were to i) examine lifetime patterns of reproductive allocation in the lady beetles Coleomegilla maculata (DeGeer) and Hippodamia convergens (Guérin-Menéville) (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) while manipulating environmental conditions that affect female body size (i.e., larval food supply), ii) to study the interaction between factors underlying female body size and the resources available during reproduction, and iii) to explore the maternal effects of female size and age on the development and survival of progeny. When different size classes of females were produced and adult females were maintained with unlimited food, there was no differences egg size across female size in C. maculata, but egg size increased over time in all females. In H. convergens, only larger females increased egg size over time, and they laid larger eggs, on average, than did small females. Maternal body size was positively correlated with the number of eggs laid per day in both species. When three size classes of females were subjected to a fluctuating food supply as adults, female size was again positively correlated with egg and daily fecundity. Whereas both species varied daily fecundity in response to adult food supply, egg size was unaffected and demonstrated a fixed pattern of change with female age and species-specific effects of maternal body size. To observe maternal effects in H. convergens, three female size classes were again produced and progeny were reared from three different periods of each female's reproductive life. Offspring from later oviposition days and larger females developed faster and achieved larger adult size than those reared from earlier oviposition days. Egg size showed inconsistent correlations with developmental parameters and adult progeny size, so other, more cryptic, maternal signals were inferred to signal phenotype development in progeny. A fixed program of producing faster-developing offspring that mature to larger sizes late in the oviposition cycle is adaptive for exploiting ephemeral aphid blooms that exhibit predictable dynamics of declining prey abundance and increasing competition. In the case of H. convergens, resource limitation during development constrained not only body size, fecundity and egg size, but also maternal ability to manipulate progeny phenotypes.