Limited effects of the maternal rearing environment on the behaviour and fitness of an insect herbivore and its natural enemy.

ABSTRACT: The maternal rearing environment can affect offspring fitness or phenotype indirectly via 'maternal effects' and can also influence a mother's behaviour and fecundity directly. However, it remains uncertain how the effects of the maternal rearing environment cascade through multiple trophic levels, such as in plant-insect herbivore-natural enemy interactions. Pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) show differential fitness on host legume species, while generalist aphid parasitoids can show variable fitness on different host aphid species, suggesting that maternal effects could operate in a plant-aphid-parasitoid system. We tested whether the maternal rearing environment affected the behaviour and fitness of aphids by rearing aphids on two plant hosts that were either the same as or different fro

SUBMITTER: Slater JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6329576 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature