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Parasitism cost of living in a high quality habitat in the bog fritillary butterfly

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Abstract

Habitat quality and the impact of natural enemies might profoundly affect metapopulation dynamics and viability. However, their relative impact has usually been considered independently. Here we address the question of how caterpillar habitat quality and parasitism prevalence interact to shape habitat selection in the bog fritillary butterfly Boloria eunomia, parasitized at the caterpillar stage by a specialist wasp, Cotesia eunomiae. We first classified habitat quality by relating caterpillar density to descriptors of different microhabitat types. Second, we investigated parasitism prevalence in those different microhabitats. Our results show that caterpillars and parasitoids mapped onto the same microhabitats, mainly zones with high abundance of the host plant. Accordingly, we suggest that both egg-laying females and parasitoids use the same cues for habitat selection. As a consequence, there should be a fitness cost for B. eunomia females to lay their eggs in places where parasitism prevalence is high. We indeed detected that B. eunomia females frequently laid eggs in habitat types that presented suboptimal microhabitat conditions for caterpillars. This suggests that the lower parasitism prevalence in these suboptimal habitat types counterbalances lower caterpillar survival, leading to an overall similar survival in optimal and suboptimal habitat types. Spreading eggs in different habitat types is thus expected to be a safe strategy to mitigate the adverse possible effects of environmental stochasticity and parasitism prevalence on offspring survival unequal among microhabitat types. From a conservation viewpoint, the preservation of habitat heterogeneity, including optimal but also suboptimal habitat areas, is crucial to ensure persistence of both the host and its parasitoid.

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Abbreviations

AICc:

Akaike’s information criterion corrected for small samples

CMR:

Capture-Mark-Recapture

DCA:

Detrended correspondence analysis

HOST:

Abundance of the host plant Persicaria bistorta

TOPO:

Microhabitat topography

VEGE1:

First axis of a Detrended correspondence analysis summarizing plant species composition

VEGE2:

Second axis of a Detrended correspondence analysis summarizing plant species composition

CLIM1:

First axis of a Principal component analysis summarizing local microclimatic conditions

CLIM2:

Second axis of a Principal component analysis summarizing local microclimatic conditions

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Acknowledgments

J.C. is teaching assistant at the UCL. N.S. is Research Associate from the Fund for Scientific Research-FNRS and acknowledges its financial support. Special capture licenses for Boloria eunomia and site access were provided by the “Ministère de la Région Wallonne”. This paper is contribution BRC228 of the Biodiversity Research Centre at UCL. MB and CT acknowledged supports from the project TenLamas funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) through the EU FP6 BiodivERsA Eranet, and the EU FP7 SCALES project (“Securing the conservations of biodiversity across Administrative levels and spatial, temporal and Ecological Scales”; project no. 226852).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earth and Life Institute, Biodiversity Research Centre, Université catholique de Louvain, Place Croix du Sud, 4, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Julie Choutt, Camille Turlure & Nicolas Schtickzelle

  2. Département Ecologie et Gestion de la Biodiversité, CNRS UMR MNHN UPMC 7204 CERSP, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), Avenue du Petit Château, 1, 91800, Brunoy, France

    Camille Turlure & Michel Baguette

  3. CNRS USR 2926 Station d’écologie expérimentale du CNRS à Moulis, Route du CNRS, 09200, Moulis, France

    Michel Baguette

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  1. Julie Choutt
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  2. Camille Turlure
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  4. Nicolas Schtickzelle
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Correspondence to Nicolas Schtickzelle.

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Choutt, J., Turlure, C., Baguette, M. et al. Parasitism cost of living in a high quality habitat in the bog fritillary butterfly. Biodivers Conserv 20, 3117–3131 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-011-0151-8

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