Skip Navigation

This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Lay Summary
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (11)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by West, S. A.
Right arrow Articles by Godfray, H. C. J.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by West, S. A.
Right arrow Articles by Godfray, H. C. J.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Behavioral Ecology Vol. 12 No. 5: 577-583
© 2001 International Society for Behavioral Ecology

Variable host quality, life-history invariants, and the reproductive strategy of a parasitoid wasp that produces single sex clutches

S. A. Westa,b, K. E. Flanagana and H. C. J. Godfraya

a Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Population Biology and Department of Biology, Imperial College, Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7PY, UK b Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh, EH9 3JT, UK

Address correspondence to S.A. West, Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JT, UK. E-mail: stu.west{at}ed.ac.uk .

The parasitic wasp Achrysocharoides zwoelferi (Hymenoptera, Eulophidae) produces clutches consisting of only one sex. Moreover, male clutch size is invariably one while female clutches are in the range one to four. We designed field experiments to determine the effect of host quality on clutch composition. We found that solitary male and solitary female clutches were reared from the same size mines, and that larger mines tended to produce gregarious female clutches. A higher proportion of male clutches were placed in older hosts, despite their large size. Variation in body size, both between and within clutches, was measured in order to test the predictions of models that take into account the constraint that clutch size is an integer trait, something of potential importance when absolute clutch size is low. Our data supported several predictions of these models, including the trade-off-invariant rule for optimal offspring size developed by Charnov and Downhower. However, while most invertebrate clutch size models assume equal resource share among members of the same clutch, we found an increase in inequality in larger clutches.

Key words: body size, clutch size, Hymenoptera, sex allocation, sex ratio, trade-off.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Behav EcolHome page
J. Carranza
Sex allocation within broods: the intrabrood sharing-out hypothesis
Behav. Ecol., March 1, 2004; 15(2): 223 - 232.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.