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1 August 2012 Does Social Feeding Improve Larval Survival of the Two-Spotted Lady Beetle, Adalia bipunctata?
Michael P. Moore, Charles R. Burt, Thomas D. Whitney, Steven A. Hastings, Gary C. Chang
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Abstract

Lady beetles typically lay eggs in clusters, and clutch-mates that emerge near to each other might benefit in multiple ways. For example, lady beetle larvae are attracted to the pheromone released by aphids under attack. Thus, one potential advantage to larvae emerging as a group is if one larva captures an aphid, others can share in consuming the same aphid. Sharing a meal likely reduces the per capita food intake of a hatchling, but it might also provide enough nutrition to prevent death by starvation during a particularly vulnerable stage. In an assay of the behavior of two-spotted lady beetles (Adalia bipunctata), larvae were attracted to chemical cues from damaged aphids, corroborating previous research. Densities of A. bipunctata hatchlings were then manipulated to test whether the presence of clutch-mates increasesed the probability of capturing prey, and the survivorship of hatchlings. In one experiment, a single aphid was placed with a number of lady beetle hatchlings ranging from 1 to 10 in a small arena for 72 hours to evaluate prey capture effectiveness and hatchling survival. As the initial density of lady beetle hatchlings increased, their prey capture rate increased. At the same time, survival of the hatchlings was not affected by their initial density. Five experiments were performed on individual fava bean plants by varying densities of aphids and lady beetle hatchlings to evaluate lady beetle survivorship measured after five days. In all five on-plant experiments, increasing the initial number of lady beetle larvae did not improve their survival. Lady beetle larvae shared meals during the small scale experiments, but that behavior did not improve their survivorship under any of the experimental conditions.

Copyright : This is an open access paper. We use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license that permits unrestricted use, provided that the paper is properly attributed.
Michael P. Moore, Charles R. Burt, Thomas D. Whitney, Steven A. Hastings, and Gary C. Chang "Does Social Feeding Improve Larval Survival of the Two-Spotted Lady Beetle, Adalia bipunctata?," Journal of Insect Science 12(101), 1-12, (1 August 2012). https://doi.org/10.1673/031.012.10101
Received: 5 September 2011; Accepted: 1 May 2012; Published: 1 August 2012
KEYWORDS
Aphididae
Coccinellidae
foraging behavior
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