Quantitative Support for the Metabolic Load Hypothesis: Metabolic Rate Measures Reveal Host-Dependent Growth Costs in a Polyphagous Herbivore.

ABSTRACT: The interactions between phytophagous insects and their host plants show a strong trend toward specialization. However, the reasons behind this trend remain largely unclear, at both the evolutionary and mechanistic level. One possible explanation is an increased energy expenditure for digesting and metabolizing more challenging hosts included in a broader host repertoire, which may reduce the energy available for other processes such as growth and development ("metabolic load hypothesis"). Differences in the performance across various hosts could reflect such costs. Using the polyphagous Polygonia c-album (comma butterfly), we tested whether observed performance differences can be linked to variation in the energetic requirements. For this, we measured the metabolic rate of larvae f

SUBMITTER: Schneider K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12696725 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature