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10 July 2017 Tachinid Fly (Diptera: Tachinidae) Parasitoids of Danaus plexippus (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)
Karen Oberhauser, Dane Elmquist, Juan Manuel Perilla-López, Ilse Gebhard, Laura Lukens, John Stireman
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Abstract

Extensive rearing of monarch larvae (Danaus plexippus L.) through the citizen science Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (MLMP) revealed that monarchs' primary parasitoids are flies in the family Tachinidae and that these parasitoids result in appreciable larval mortality. We document the tachinid community that attacks monarchs in the United States, evaluate their relative frequency, and examine variation in their specificity, oviposition strategy, and use of host stages. Based on results of rearing >20,000 monarchs by MLMP volunteers, overall parasitism by tachinids across life stages was 9.8% (17% for monarchs collected as fifth instars). We identified the flies that emerged from 466 monarch hosts, and found seven Tachinidae species. In decreasing order of frequency, these included Lespesia archippivora (Riley), Hyphantrophaga virilis (Aldrich & Webber), Compsilura concinnata (Meigen), Leschenaultia n. sp., Madremyia saundersii (Williston), Lespesia sp., and Nilea erecta (Coquillett). Lespesia sp., Leschenaultia n. sp., and N. erecta had not been previously reported as monarch parasitoids, and Leschenaultia n. sp. is apparently undescribed. We include new state records (Texas and Iowa) for C. concinnata. Lespesia archippivora and C. concinnata were overrepresented as parasitoids of later instars and were absent from monarchs collected as eggs, but H. virilis and Leschenaultia sp., which lay their eggs on foliage, were reared from caterpillars collected as eggs. To our knowledge, we include the first report of multiparasitism of monarchs, in which more than one parasitoid species emerged from a host. The biology of the tachinid parasitoids we identified and their relationship with monarchs is examined.

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.
Karen Oberhauser, Dane Elmquist, Juan Manuel Perilla-López, Ilse Gebhard, Laura Lukens, and John Stireman "Tachinid Fly (Diptera: Tachinidae) Parasitoids of Danaus plexippus (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)," Annals of the Entomological Society of America 110(6), 536-543, (10 July 2017). https://doi.org/10.1093/aesa/sax048
Received: 31 January 2017; Accepted: 15 May 2017; Published: 10 July 2017
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KEYWORDS
citizen science
multiparasitism
parasitoid
Tachinidae
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