The more the merrier: Conspecific density improves performance of gregarious larvae and reduces susceptibility to a pupal parasitoid.

ABSTRACT: Aggregation can confer advantages in animal foraging, defense, and thermoregulation. There is a tight connection between the evolution of insect sociality and a highly effective immune system, presumably to inhibit rapid disease spread in a crowded environment. This connection is less evident for animals that spend only part of their life cycle in a social environment, such as noneusocial gregarious insects. Our aim was to elucidate the effects of group living by the gregarious larvae of the Glanville fritillary butterfly with respect to individual performance, immunity, and susceptibility to a parasitoid. We were also interested in the role of family relative to common postdiapause environment in shaping life-history traits. Larvae were reared at high or low density and then exposed to th

SUBMITTER: Rosa E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5743493 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature