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Publication

Conserved oviposition preferences in alpine leaf beetle populations despite host shifts and isolation

Anthony Christopher Davison
2007
Journal Articles

Abstract

Choosing the plant on which to lay their eggs is the last act of care that most female herbivorous insects bestow upon their offspring. These decisions play a pivotal role in insect–plant interactions, placing host preference under strong selection and contributing to the diversity of phytophagous insects as one of the first traits to adapt to new hosts. 2. This study presents a test of whether extreme isolation and exposure to different host plants can produce intra-specific divergence in oviposition preference in alpine insects. Geographic variation should impose selection to fine-tune host plant ranking and specificity to the plants normally encountered, to avoid wasting time during the very limited reproductive season experienced at high altitudes. 3. Beetles from five populations of Oreina elongata differing in host availability were offered three natural hosts: Cirsium spinosissimum, Adenostyles alliariae, and Adenostyles glabra. A novel application of a continuation ratio model (logistic regression) was made to sequential no-choice experiments, combined with quasilikelihood analysis of multiple-choice experiments. 4. The results show little geographic variation in host plant choice: all populations strongly preferred Cirsium in multiple-choice trials, and in no-choice experiments laid around 47% of their remaining eggs during each stage, almost regardless of the host present. 5. Enemy-free space seems to explain the preference for Cirsium, but isolation and exposure to different plants has clearly not caused local adaptation in host plant ranking or specificity. Reasons for this conservatism despite divergence in other characteristics are discussed.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/369b7bdd-967e-4694-b249-69721244bc7a

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Anthony Christopher Davison
2007
Journal Articles

Abstract

Choosing the plant on which to lay their eggs is the last act of care that most female herbivorous insects bestow upon their offspring. These decisions play a pivotal role in insect–plant interactions, placing host preference under strong selection and contributing to the diversity of phytophagous insects as one of the first traits to adapt to new hosts. 2. This study presents a test of whether extreme isolation and exposure to different host plants can produce intra-specific divergence in oviposition preference in alpine insects. Geographic variation should impose selection to fine-tune host plant ranking and specificity to the plants normally encountered, to avoid wasting time during the very limited reproductive season experienced at high altitudes. 3. Beetles from five populations of Oreina elongata differing in host availability were offered three natural hosts: Cirsium spinosissimum, Adenostyles alliariae, and Adenostyles glabra. A novel application of a continuation ratio model (logistic regression) was made to sequential no-choice experiments, combined with quasilikelihood analysis of multiple-choice experiments. 4. The results show little geographic variation in host plant choice: all populations strongly preferred Cirsium in multiple-choice trials, and in no-choice experiments laid around 47% of their remaining eggs during each stage, almost regardless of the host present. 5. Enemy-free space seems to explain the preference for Cirsium, but isolation and exposure to different plants has clearly not caused local adaptation in host plant ranking or specificity. Reasons for this conservatism despite divergence in other characteristics are discussed.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/369b7bdd-967e-4694-b249-69721244bc7a

About this result

Related concepts (32)

Host (biology)

In biology and medicine, a host is a larger organism that harbours a smaller organism; whether a parasitic, a mutualistic, or a commensalist guest (symbiont). The guest is typically provided with nourishment and shelter. Examples include animals playing host to parasitic worms (e.g. nematodes), cells harbouring pathogenic (disease-causing) viruses, or a bean plant hosting mutualistic (helpful) nitrogen-fixing bacteria. More specifically in botany, a host plant supplies food resources to micropredators, which have an evolutionarily stable relationship with their hosts similar to ectoparasitism.

Plant

Plants are eukaryotes, predominantly photosynthetic, that form the kingdom Plantae. Many are multicellular. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi. All current definitions exclude the fungi and some of the algae. By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (Latin for "green plants") which consists of the green algae and the embryophytes or land plants. The latter include hornworts, liverworts, mosses, lycophytes, ferns, conifers and other gymnosperms, and flowering plants.

Natural selection

Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charles Darwin popularised the term "natural selection", contrasting it with artificial selection, which is intentional, whereas natural selection is not. Variation exists within all populations of organisms. This occurs partly because random mutations arise in the genome of an individual organism, and their offspring can inherit such mutations.

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