RGGS, Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA.
Ecology and Evolution, Entomology and Nematology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA.
Biol Lett. 2022 Jun;18(6):20220007. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2022.0007. Epub 2022 Jun 1.
Parental care can protect offspring from predators but can also create opportunities for parents to vector parasites to their offspring. We hypothesized that the risk of infection by maternally vectored parasites would increase with the frequency of mother-offspring contact. spp. wasps (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae) build nests in which they rear a single offspring. species exhibit varied offspring provisioning behaviours: some species enter the nest once to provision a single, large caterpillar, whereas others enter the nest repeatedly to provision with many smaller caterpillars. We hypothesized that each nest visit increases the risk of offspring parasitism by (Strepsiptera: Xenidae), whose infectious stages ride on the mother wasp (phoresy) to reach the vulnerable offspring. We quantified parasitism risk by external examination of museum-curated specimens-the anterior portion of protrudes between the adult host's abdominal sclerites and reflects infection during the larval stage. As predicted, species that receive larger numbers of provisions incur greater risks of parasitism, with nest provisioning behaviour explaining 90% of the interspecific variation in mean parasitism. These findings demonstrate that parental care can augment, rather than reduce, the risk of parasite transmission to offspring.
亲代抚育可以保护后代免受捕食者的侵害，但也为父母将寄生虫传播给后代提供了机会。我们假设，通过母体传播寄生虫的感染风险会随着亲代与子代接触的频率而增加。 spp. 黄蜂（膜翅目：Sphecidae）在巢中养育一个后代。 物种表现出不同的后代供养行为：一些物种进入巢中一次，为一个单一的、大的毛毛虫提供食物，而另一些物种则反复进入巢中，为许多较小的毛毛虫提供食物。我们假设，每次巢访问都会增加被寄生的风险 （双翅目：Xenidae），其传染性阶段附着在母黄蜂上（附生），以到达脆弱的 后代。我们通过对博物馆收藏的 标本进行外部检查来量化寄生风险—— 突出物的前部位于成年宿主的腹部板之间，反映了幼虫期的感染。正如预测的那样，接收更多食物的 物种遭受寄生的风险更大，巢供养行为解释了 90%的种间平均寄生变异。这些发现表明，亲代抚育可以增加而不是降低寄生虫向后代传播的风险。
