Summary
The parasitic wasp, Telenomus remus, lays her eggs in diserete patches of moth eggs, where her offspring develop and mate before dispersal, satisfying conditions for local mate competition (LMC). In the presence of other ovipositing females, wasps lay a higher sex ratio (proportion males), as predicted by LMC theory, and achieve this by a combination of two mechanisms, (1) avoidance of superparasitism and a sequence of sex allocation initially biased towards males and (2) a direct increase in sex ratio in the presence of other wasps, sex ratio increases with the proportion of previously parasitized hosts, as predicted by LMC theory. In both cases, chemical traces left by foraging wasps are indicated as the stimuli causing wasps to increase the proportion of males allocated to hosts.
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van Welzen, C.R.L., Waage, J.K. Adaptive responses to local mate competition by the parasitoid, Telenomus remus . Behav Ecol Sociobiol 21, 359–365 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00299930
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00299930