Complementarity effects through dietary mixing enhance the performance of a generalist insect herbivore.

ABSTRACT: The ontogenetic niche concept predicts that resource use depends on an organism's developmental stage. This concept has been investigated primarily in animals that show differing resource use strategies as juveniles and as adults, such as amphibians. We studied resource use and performance in the grasshopper Chorthippus parallelus (Orthoptera, Acrididae) provided with food plant mixtures of either one, three or eight plant species throughout their development. C. parallelus survival and fecundity was highest in the food plant mixture with eight plant species and lowest in the treatments where only one single plant species was offered as food. C. parallelus' consumption throughout its ontogeny depended on sex, and feeding on different plant species was dependent on a grasshopper's developme

SUBMITTER: Unsicker SB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2757592 | biostudies-literature | 2008 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature