Frederickx Christine, Dekeirsschieter Jessica, Verheggen François J, Haubruge Eric
Department of Functional and Evolutionary Entomology, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liege, Passage des Déportés 2, 5030 Gembloux, Belgium
J Insect Sci. 2014 May 1;14:58. doi: 10.1093/jis/14.1.58.
The foraging behaviour of a parasitoid insect species includes the host's habitat and subsequent location of the host. Habitats substrate, substrate moisture, and light levels can affect the host searching of different species of parasitoids. However, the depth at which parasitoids concentrate their search effort is another important ecological characteristic and plays an important role in locating a host. Here, we investigated the ability of a pupal parasitoid, Nasonia vitripennis Walker (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae), to penetrate and kill fly pupae located at different depths of the substrate. Three different types of substrate were tested: loam soil, compost, and vermiculite substrate. In both loam soil and compost, all of the parasitism activity was restricted to pupae placed directly on the surface. Parasitism activity in vermiculite showed that the average number of pupae parasitized decreased with depth of substrate. These results suggest that fly pupae situated deeper in the substrate are less subjected to parasitism by N. vitripennis.
寄生昆虫物种的觅食行为包括宿主的栖息地以及随后对宿主的定位。栖息地的基质、基质湿度和光照水平会影响不同种类寄生昆虫对宿主的搜寻。然而，寄生昆虫集中其搜寻努力的深度是另一个重要的生态特征，并且在定位宿主方面起着重要作用。在此，我们研究了一种蛹寄生蜂——丽蝇蛹集金小蜂（Nasonia vitripennis Walker，膜翅目：金小蜂科）穿透并杀死位于基质不同深度的蝇蛹的能力。测试了三种不同类型的基质：壤土、堆肥和蛭石基质。在壤土和堆肥中，所有寄生活动都局限于直接放置在表面的蛹。蛭石中的寄生活动表明，被寄生的蛹的平均数量随着基质深度的增加而减少。这些结果表明，位于基质较深处的蝇蛹受丽蝇蛹集金小蜂寄生的可能性较小。
