Parasitism can influence many aspects of the host’s behaviour and physiology, which in turn can have a profound impact on their population and evolutionary ecology. In many host parasite interactions there is often a time lag between infection and the death of the host, yet little is known, experimentally or theoretically, about the effects that intra-class competition between parasitised and u...

Natural parasitoid systems exhibit considerable variation in their life history properties yet little is known about the effects of development time on parasitoid fitness or of the conditions that might select for rapid development at the expense of reduced parasitoid growth. In this study the techniques of adaptive dynamics are applied to a discrete time host-parasitoid model to examine the ev...

Plant chemical defenses can negatively affect insect herbivore fitness, but they can also decrease herbivore palatability to predators or decrease parasitoid fitness, potentially changing selective pressures on both plant investment in production of chemical defenses and host feeding behavior. Larvae of the fern moth Herpetogramma theseusalis live in and feed upon leaf shelters of their own con...

In this study, researchers studied the evolutionary effects on parasitoids of symbiont-mediated resistance by Acyrthosiphon pisum to the parasitoid, Aphidis ervi. They were able to take advantage of the parthenogenic life cycle of the aphid, allowing them to effectively rule out host evolution as the factor effecting results. They performed several experiments to determine what evolutionary eff...

Antagonistic interactions between the nymphal parasitoid, Tamarixia radiata Waterston (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae), and the ARSEF 3581 strain of the entomopathogenic fungus, Isaria fumosorosea Wize (Hypocreales: Cordycipitaceae), could disrupt biological control of the Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Liviidae). Three interactions were evaluated under laboratory conditio...

In sexual organisms, low population density can result in mating failures and subsequently yields a low population growth rate and high chance of extinction. For species that are in tight interaction, as in host-parasitoid systems, population dynamics are primarily constrained by demographic interdependences, so that mating failures may have much more intricate consequences. Our main objective ...

This study investigated the effects of ant attendance on the parasitoid community and parasitism of lac insect Kerria yunnanensis aggregations in Yunnan province, China. We manipulated ant attendance to establish three treatments: (1) ant exclusion; (2) low ant attendance by several ant species; and (3) high ant attendance by Crematogaster macaoensis. Five parasitoid species were collected, wit...

1. Parasitoid attack strategy has been divided into two broad categories, koinobiosis and idiobiosis, based on the arrest of host development and the intimacy of larval contact. Koinobionts allow the host to continue developing and larvae usually feed within the host body, whereas idiobionts stop host development and larvae usually feed externally. 2. Comparisons of host ranges from rearings of...

Interactions of the parasitoid Lysiphlebus testaceipes (Cresson) and the greenbug, Schizaphis graminum (Rondani), on greenbug-resistant 'Cargill 607E' (antibiosis), 'Cargill 797' (primarily tolerance), and -susceptible 'Golden Harvest 510B' sorghum, Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench, were tested using three levels of biotype I greenbug infestation. The parasitoid infestation rate was 0.5 female and 1...