Effect of temperature on the walking behaviour of an egg parasitoid: disentangling kinetic response from integrated response

Abstract

1. This study investigated the effect of temperatures ranging from 10.8 to 34.2 ∘ C on seven walking parameters of an egg parasitoid, Anaphes listronoti. Those responses were compared with a theoretical kinetic model in order to disentangle the kinetic response of the insect from its integrated response.2. Walking speed increased continuously with temperature, but walking distance and duration were maximised between 25 and 30 ∘ C, and decreased at higher and lower temperatures. At the lowest temperature, females unexpectedly walked a greater distance and for a longer duration in comparison with intermediate temperatures.3. The number of walking bouts followed the same polynomial trend as walking distance and duration, with a maximum between 30 and 35 ∘ C. The duration of walking bouts was maximised at 20 ∘ C and decreased at lower and higher temperatures, whereas the duration of resting bouts linearly decreased with increasing temperature. There was no effect of temperature on the turning rate of females.4. For A. listronoti, walking speed and duration of resting bouts followed the kinetic response, but the other behavioural components did not, especially at the lowest and highest temperatures. Walking distance and duration were higher than expected under the kinetic response at 10.8 ∘ C and lower than expected at 34.2 ∘ C. This pattern suggests an integrated response combining behavioural escape from adverse temperature and energy saving.5. This detailed analysis of the walking behaviour of A. listronoti illustrates the complexity of insect behavioural responses to temperature and the difficulty involved in assessing underlying mechanisms.

Impacts of predator‐induced behavioural plasticity on the temperature dependence of predator–prey activity and population dynamics

“…The estimated activation energy values for speed during voluntary locomotion (0.21 eV; Table S4) were substantially below the mean expected value of 0.65 eV predicted by theory (Brown et al., 2004) and observed across taxa (Dell et al., 2011). Observed thermal dependence of swimming speed also deviated strongly from the theoretical kinetic effect of temperature on this metric (Figure 2; Augustin et al., 2020), determined by the amount of kinetic energy in physiological systems (Abram et al., 2017).…”

Impact of the pear psyllidCacopsylla pyrihost instar on the behavior and fitness of the parasitoidTrechnites insidious

“…Ten replicates par larval instar were performed, using a naïve parasitoid female for each replicate. Using the event recorder software ODRec 3.0 (© Samuel Péan), we recorded and quantified: 1) the number of host-feeding behavior (when the parasitoid actively feeds on the host), 2) the time spent feeding on the host (expressed as a percentage of the total experimental time), 3) the time spent grooming (expressed as a percentage of the total experimental time), 4) the time spent walking (expressed as a percentage of the total experimental time), 5) the time spent resting (expressed as a percentage of the total experimental time), 6) the number of antennal contacts with the psyllid, and 8) the number of ovipositor insertions into the host (Albitar et al, 2016; Augustin et al, 2020). The host acceptance rate was calculated as the number of ovipositor insertions divided by the number of antennal contacts.…”

The effect of temperature on host patch exploitation by an egg parasitoid

“…In order to differentiate between kinetic and integrated responses, we compared A. listronoti parasitism in relation to temperature to a null kinetic model. Previous data on A. listronoti walking speed under different temperatures [34] were used as a proxy for the null thermic model (sensu [6], i.e. the kinetic effect of temperature on behaviour, without further response or constraint from the organism).…”