The response of an insect parasitoid, Ormia ochracea (Tachinidae), to the uncertainty of larval success during infestation

Abstract

Ormia ochracea is a parasitoid fly which lays its larvae on its hosts, the field crickets Gryllus integer and Gryllus rubens, in two distinct modes: (1) directly on the host and (2) around the host. In the field, 12.7% of male crickets were parasitized and 3.2% were super-parasitized. Despite the disadvantages of parasitizing infested hosts, there was no evidence that O. ochracea avoided superparasitism. This and other experiments suggest that the host assessment ability of O. ochracea is less than that reported for many hymenopteran parasitoids. by manipulating the number of larvae in each cricket, we determined that four to five larvae per host resulted in the largest number of adult flies. However, as larval number per host increased from one to six, pupal size, and hence adult size, declined. In the field, hosts were found with a mean of 1.7 ± 1.0 (SD) larvae per cricket, suggesting that there may be some selection pressure against larger clutch sizes. Nevertheless clutch sizes larger than the host can support were sometimes found in the field. During the first mode of larviposition, gravid flies deposited no more than three larvae directly onto the host. Larvae deposited directly on the host had a high probability of infesting it. During the second mode of larviposition, gravid flies laid a larger number of larvae around the host (6.1 ± 5.2). Larvae that were laid around the host were less likely to infest a cricket than were larvae that were deposited directly onto it. O. ochracea is unique in that its two different modes of larviposition have different probabilities of larval success. Even though the success rate for larvae laid during the second mode of larviposition was low, the possibility of parasitizing more hosts appears to have selected for flies laying more larvae (e.g. increasing clutch size) than is optimal if all the larvae successfully entered a single host.