Parental age at mating affects reproductive attributes of the aphidophagous ladybird beetle, Coelophora saucia (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae)

Abstract

Ageing and its affect on life attributes have not been widely explored in ladybirds. The present study investigates the influence of female and male age at mating on the reproductive attributes of the ladybird beetle, Coelophora saucia (Mulsant). All reproductive attributes, viz. fecundity, percentage egg hatch, pre-oviposition, oviposition and post-oviposition periods were found to be influenced by the ages of both females and males at mating. This is unlike the results of previous studies on ladybirds, where male age was found to influence only percentage egg hatch. The influence of male age at mating on fecundity and reproductive periods is probably due to age influenced variation in seminal proteins, which influence fecundity and when the eggs are laid.

The influence of female age on male mating preference and reproductive success in cabbage beetle, Colaphellus bowringi

“…Age is generally considered a cue of female reproductive potential and can ultimately affect reproductive fitness (Foster & Howard, ; Bonduriansky & Brassil, ; Maklakov et al ., ; Okmar et al ., ). The most obvious traits influencing the reproductive fitness are fecundity, fertility and parental longevity (Bonduriansky, ).…”

“…The hatching rate of eggs laid by middle‐aged females was significantly higher than that of those laid by young and old females, while the longevity of males was not significantly affected by female age. Similar results of female mating success have been reported in ladybird beetle Menochilus sexmaculatus and Coccinella transversalis (Dixon & Agarwala, ), fruit flies D. ananassae and D. bipectinata (Prathibha & Krishna, ; Somashekar et al ., ), aphidophagous ladybird beetle Coelophora saucia (Omkar et al ., ) and parthenium beetle, Z. bicolorata (Pandey & Omkar, ), showing a parabolic trend or triangular function in terms of fecundity and fertility with the age at mating of females. This suggests that the reproductive physiology of female C. bowringi changes with their age and middle‐aged females tend to offer greater reproductive returns to males than younger or older ones.…”

“…It is largely accepted that males are less likely to forego any mating opportunity since their fitness is determined by the number of offspring they sire. However, fecundity is strongly related to female age at mating (Kindlmann et al ., ; Dixon & Agarwala, ; Omkar et al ., ). Therefore, when males encounter multiple females of different ages simultaneously, they should prefer those females that tend to maximize their expected fertilization success from each mating.…”

“…To our knowledge, the empirical evidence of male mate choice based on female age have been reported only in a few insects and other animal species, showing mate preference for females of a particular age (Bonduriansky, ; Muller et al ., ; Pandey & Omkar, ). Furthermore, males will benefit when they bias their mating efforts toward females of higher reproductive potential (Reinhold et al ., ; Byrne & Rice, ; Omkar et al ., ; Pandey & Omkar, ). To better understand how female age influences male mate preference and reproductive success, we need to conduct more empirical studies to explicitly test these questions.…”

Fecundity and fertility of ladybird beetle Harmonia axyridis after prolonged cold storage

“…This last eventuality might be verified by mating the old females to young males. Lower hatching rate has been found in old females of several ladybird species (Propylea dissecta (Mulsant), Mishra and Omkar 2004, Coelophora saucia (Mulsant), Omkar et al 2010) even if mated with young males.…”