Falling Victim to Wasps in the Air: A Fate Driven by Prey Flight Morphology?

ABSTRACT: In prey-predator systems where the interacting individuals are both fliers, the flight performance of both participants heavily influences the probability of success of the predator (the prey is captured) and of the prey (the predator is avoided). While the flight morphology (an estimate of flight performance) of predatory wasps has rarely been addressed as a factor that may contribute to explain prey use, how the flight morphology of potential prey influences the output of predator-prey encounters has not been studied. Here, we hypothesized that flight morphology associated with flight ability (flight muscle mass to body mass ratio (FMR) and body mass to wing area ratio (wing loading, WL)) of Diptera affect their probability of being captured by specialized Diptera-hunting wasps (Bembix m

SUBMITTER: Ballesteros Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4821532 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature