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Abstract Feeding for most animals involves bouts of active ingestion alternating with bouts of no ingestion. In insects, the temporal patterning of bouts varies widely with resource quality and is known to affect growth, development time, and fitness. However, the precise impacts of resource quality and feeding behavior on insect life history traits are poorly understood. To explore and better understand the connections between feeding behavior, resource quality, and insect life history traits, we combined laboratory experiments with a recently proposed mechanistic model of insect growth and development for a larval herbivore,Manduca sexta. We ran feeding trials for 4th and 5th instar larvae across different diet types (two hostplants and artificial diet) and used these data to parameterize a joint model of age and mass at maturity that incorporates both insect feeding behavior and hormonal activity. We found that the estimated durations of both feeding and nonfeeding bouts were significantly shorter on low‐quality than on high‐quality diets. We then explored how well the fitted model predicted historical out‐of‐sample data on age and mass ofM. sexta. We found that the model accurately described qualitative outcomes for the out‐of‐sample data, notably that a low‐quality diet results in reduced mass and later age at maturity compared with high‐quality diets. Our results clearly demonstrate the importance of diet quality on multiple components of insect feeding behavior (feeding and nonfeeding) and partially validate a joint model of insect life history. We discuss the implications of these findings with respect to insect herbivory and discuss ways in which our model could be improved or extended to other systems.
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Population divergence in nutrient-temperature interactions in Pieris rapae
The interaction between larval host plant quality and temperature can influence the short-term physiological rates and life-history traits of insect herbivores. These factors can vary locally, resulting in local adaptation in responses to diet and temperature, but the comparison of these interactions between populations is infrequently carried out. In this study, we examine how the macronutrient ratio of an artificial diet determines the larval growth, development, and survival of larvalPieris rapae(Lepidoptera: Pieridae) at different temperatures between two invasive North American populations from different climatic regions. We conducted a fully factorial experiment with three temperature treatments (18°C, 25°C, and 32°C) and three artificial diet treatments varying in terms of the ratio of protein to carbohydrate (low protein, balanced, and high protein). The effects of diet on life-history traits were greater at lower temperatures, but these differed between populations. Larvae from the subtropical population had reduced survival to pupation on the low-protein diet in the cold temperature treatment, whereas larval survival for the temperate population was equally high for all temperature and diet treatments. Overall, both populations performed more poorly (i.e., they showed slower rates of consumption, growth, and development, and had a smaller pupal mass) in the diet with the low protein ratio, but larvae from the temperate population were less sensitive to diet ratio changes at all temperatures. Our results confirm that the physiological and life-history consequences of imbalanced nutrition for insect herbivores may depend on developmental temperatures, and that different geographic populations ofP. rapaewithin North America vary in their sensitivity to nutritional balance and temperature.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1950055
- PAR ID:
- 10512128
- Publisher / Repository:
- Frontiers in Insect Science
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Insect Science
- Volume:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2673-8600
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3389/finsc.2023.1237624
