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Sex ratio and host size in a parasitoid wasp

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Summary

Parasitoid wasps often lay male eggs in small hosts and female eggs in larger hosts. The selective advantage of this strategy can be explained by assuming wasp fitness increases with host size and that this fitness increase is greater in females than in males. I conducted experiments to test a model based on this explanation and found the results generally supported the model with one exception; unlike what the model assumed, these wasps were unable to adjust their offspring sex ratios in each generation to different host size distributions. This finding suggests an alternate view as to how selection might operate in the evolution of parasitoid sex ratios.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, 47907, USA

    W. Thomas Jones

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  1. W. Thomas Jones
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Jones, W.T. Sex ratio and host size in a parasitoid wasp. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 10, 207–210 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00299686

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00299686

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