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- Title
Offspring size--number strategy in the bethylid parasitoid Laelius pedatus
- Authors
Mayhew, Peter J.
- Abstract
I observed clutch size and body size of resulting offspring for the parasitoid Laelius pedatus (Say) (Hymenoptera: Bethylidae) on hosts of different sizes. Results were compared with the predictions of offspring size-number models and clutch-size models. Larger clutches werelaid on larger hosts. However, even after females had adjusted clutch size to the size of the host, offspring size was larger in larger broods. The variance in offspring size between broods decreased with increasing clutch size as expected, but the decrease was smaller than predicted by Charnov and Downhower's trade-off invariant rule. Theorypredicts such trends when the shape of the trade-off between per capita investment and per capita offspring fitness depends on clutch size or host size. By observing how this assumption might apply to bethylid wasps, I generate a number of testable hypotheses to explain the observed trends.
- Subjects
BIRD behavior; MODELING (Sculpture); PARASITOLOGY
- Publication
Behavioral Ecology, 1998, Vol 9, Issue 1, p54
- ISSN
1045-2249
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/beheco/9.1.54