Author
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Olson, Dawn |
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ANDOW, D - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA |
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Submitted to: Heredity
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: 2/14/2002 Publication Date: 4/1/2002 Citation: Olson, D.M., Andow, D.A. 2002. Inheritance of an oviposition behavior by an egg parasitoid. Heredity. 88:437-443. Interpretive Summary: Individual differences in behavior are common and have consequences for the ecology and evolution of populations. For parasitoid species, there is an unusually direct link between oviposition behavior and fitness, and many of these species are mass reared in laboratory colonies for biological control. Female egg parasitoids of a particular laboratory-reared population show a generally low but variable percent parasitism of host egg masses which has persisted over many generations. Evolution of any adaptation depends primarily on additive genetic variance in the traits involved and on selection. Understanding the environmental and genetic influences associated with oviposition behavior would lead to a fuller understanding of the sources of variability expressed, including potential responses to selection and predictability of behaviors in the field. Technical Abstract: Many studies provide evidence for genetic variation in life history and behavioral traits of insects, using techniques that compared performance in a common environment, which confounds estimations of nuclear additive variance when maternal effects are present. We obtained full and half-sib groups of female parasitoids from a nested mating design, which permitted the partitioning of the variance of egg mass parasitism into additive genetic, maternal and/or dominant genetic and environmental components. A mother-daughter regression analysis allowed a determination of the direction of a potential response to selection in the event of maternal effects. No direct additive genetic effects were associated with the percentage of an egg mass parasitized, but a significant amount of the variance had a maternal source. The relationship between mothers and daughters in egg mass parasitism was positive, and 55.4% of the progeny of given mother had behaviors that resemble their mother. Variability in host availability through time and the resulting fluctuations in conspecific densities could have caused several genetic bottlenecks since the inception of the colony. The result could be that additive genetic variance has been reduced through random genetic drift, extensive inbreeding or strong selection within this population. |
