Abstract
In natural environments, organisms must adapt to changing light conditions. Significant research has been done on diurnal pollinating insects’ vision. However, little is known on parasitoid insects. Here, we studied how locomotor activity of the parasitoid wasp Aphidius ervi and its main host, the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum, is affected under controlled artificial illumination. Using LEDs of 5 different wavelengths (361, 450, 500-600, 626 and 660 nm), we created different artificial light spectra that parasitoids and host aphids can encounter in natural environment including leaf-shade and direct sunlight. We found that pea aphid probability of walking depended on interactions between illumination, developmental stage and genotype as expressed in clonal variation. Artificial light intensity did not affect the parasitoid’s probability of walking as opposed to wavelength, and activity depended on the sex of individuals. Males were more active than females under all monochromatic wavelength spectra tested. Virgin females were much less active under the artificial leaf-shade illumination and artificial sunlight, as compared to males and mated females. Delay before flight for females was favored by sunlight illumination whereas the light environment did not affect flight delay for males. We demonstrated that locomotor activity of A. pisum (walking) and of A. ervi (walking and flight) vary according to the light environment. This study should help develop better understanding of the effects of illumination on host-parasitoid interactions, which in turn may help control insect pest populations.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery grant to Conrad Cloutier and the NSERC, the Canada Research Chair in Liquid Crystals and Behavioral Biophotonics and the Manning Innovation Foundation grant to T. Galstian. We thank Patrick Larochelle, Louis Haeberlé et Laurent Chaussé from Department of physics, engineering physics and optics, Université Laval for the technical support during light box construction. We also thank Gaétan Daigle and Sergio Ewane Ebouele from Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Université Laval for help with statistical analysis.
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Cochard, P., Galstian, T. & Cloutier, C. Light Environments Differently Affect Parasitoid Wasps and their Hosts’ Locomotor Activity. J Insect Behav 30, 595–611 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-017-9644-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-017-9644-y