The biology and ecology of the large blue butterfly Phengaris (Maculinea) arion: a review

Hayes, Matthew

doi:10.1007/s10841-015-9820-3

Cited by 18 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Parasite infection facilitated by the host itself is also known in the butterfly Phengaris arion whose larvae parasitize ant colonies. However, P. arion larvae manipulate the ants into carrying them to their nest using chemical and acoustic signals [31], whereas the propensity to accept offspring of other cichlid species is a general feature of many mouthbrooders [21,32,33]. Our tests demonstrated sympatric S. diagramma to be a relatively stronger acceptor than the allopatric H. aeneocolor but this finding has limited general application as the comparison only included two species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parasitic cuckoo catfish exploit parental responses to stray offspring

Polačik

Reichard

Smith

et al. 2019

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Interspecific brood parasitism occurs in several independent lineages of birds and social insects, putatively evolving from intraspecific brood parasitism. The cuckoo catfish, Synodontis multipunctatus , the only known obligatory non-avian brood parasite, exploits mouthbrooding cichlid fishes in Lake Tanganyika, despite the absence of parental care in its evolutionary lineage (family Mochokidae). Cuckoo catfish participate in host spawning events, with their eggs subsequently collected and brooded by parental cichlids, though they can later be selectively rejected by the host. One scenario for the origin of brood parasitism in cuckoo catfish is through predation of cichlid eggs during spawning, eventually resulting in a spatial and temporal match in oviposition by host and parasite. Here we demonstrate experimentally that, uniquely among all known brood parasites, cuckoo catfish have the capacity to re-infect their hosts at a late developmental stage following egg rejection. We show that cuckoo catfish offspring can survive outside the host buccal cavity and re-infect parental hosts at a later incubation phase by exploiting the strong parental instinct of hosts to collect stray offspring. This finding implies an alternative evolutionary origin for cuckoo catfish brood parasitism, with the parental response of host cichlids facilitating its evolution. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The coevolutionary biology of brood parasitism: from mechanism to pattern’.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parasitic cuckoo catfish exploit parental responses to stray offspring

Polačik

Reichard

Smith

et al. 2019

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…The host ant specificity of P. arion is less well-known than that of other European Phengaris species (Hayes 2015;Settele et al 2005;Tartally et al 2019), because it is very difficult to find P. arion caterpillars in Myrmica nests (Sielezniew et al 2010a, b). Only two host ant data are known from the Carpathian Basin (Tartally et al 2017): a spring arion pupa was recorded in a M. scabrinodis nest and a summer arion prepupa with M. specioides.…”

Section: Phenologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Incipient sympatric speciation via host race formation in Phengaris arion (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae)

et al. 2019

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The plausibility of sympatric speciation is still debated despite increasing evidence, such as host races in insects. This speciation process may be occurring in the case of the two phenological forms of the obligatorily myrmecophilous Phengaris arion. The main goal of our research was to study the nature and causes of difference between these forms focusing primarily on the incipient speciation via host races. Molecular analyses based on highly variable microsatellites together with Wolbachia screening, male genitalia morphometrics and host ant studies were carried out on four syntopic sample pairs. Our results show that the two phenological forms of P. arion may meet the criteria for host plant races. They coexist in sympatry in certain parts of the species range which is allowed by the adaptation to the distinct phenology of the host plants. Negative selection acts against the intermediate individuals which are on the wing in the inappropriate time frame. Thus, disruptive selection affects and produces bimodal distributions of phenotypes. However, the phenology of food plants is not entirely distinct and fluctuates year by year. Therefore, the two forms can exchange genes occasionally depending on the length of the time slot when they can meet with each other. Consequently, the reproductive isolation could not be completed and the existence of the two arion forms may represent only an incipient stage of sympatric speciation. It is also clear that Wolbachia is likely not a driver of sympatric speciation in this case.

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“…In some species, host plant flowering time determines oviposition and individuals flowering early in the season receive more eggs because the presence of the preferred bud developmental stages overlaps more with the period of butterfly oviposition in early‐ than in late‐flowering plants (Valdés & Ehrlén, ). Moreover, the mobility of caterpillars after leaving their host plants is low (Hayes, ), and further development is possible only if the foraging range of suitable host ants is sufficiently close to the host plant individual (usually a few metres). Butterflies are therefore expected to oviposit on host plants in suitable development stages only if plants occur at micro‐sites where ant hosts are present (Wynhoff, Grutters, & van Langevelde, ; Wynhoff & van Langevelde, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resource overlap and dilution effects shape host plant use in a myrmecophilous butterfly

Valdés

Ehrlén

2019

Journal of Animal Ecology

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1. The effects of consumers on fitness of resource organisms are a complex function of the spatio-temporal distribution of the resources, consumer functional responses and trait preferences, and availability of other resources. The ubiquitous variation in the intensity of species interactions has importantconsequences for the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of natural populations. Nevertheless, little is known about the processes causing this variation and their operational scales. Here, we examine how variation in the intensity of a consumer-resource interaction is related to resource timing, resource density and abundance of other resources.3. Using the butterfly consumer Phengaris alcon and its two sequential resources, the host plant Gentiana pneumonanthe and the host ants Myrmica spp., we investigated how butterfly egg-laying depended on focal host plant phenology, density and phenology of neighbouring host plants and host ant abundance.4. Butterflies preferred plants that simultaneously maximized the availability of both larval resources in time and space, that is, they chose early-flowering plants that were of higher nutritional quality for larvae where host ants were abundant. Both the probability of oviposition and the number of eggs were lower in plant individuals with a high neighbour density than in more isolated plants, and this dilution effect was stronger when neighbours flowered early. 5.Our results show that plant-herbivore interactions simultaneously depend on the spatio-temporal distribution of a focal resource and on the small-scale spatial variation in the abundance of other herbivore resources. Given that consumers have negative effects on fitness and prefer certain timing of the resource organisms, this implies that processes acting at the levels of individuals, populations and communities simultaneously contribute to variation in consumer-mediated natural selection. K E Y W O R D S butterflies, flowering phenology, myrmecophily, plant-herbivore interactions, resource use, spatial variation 650 | Journal of Animal Ecology VALDÉS AnD EHRLÉn | INTRODUC TI ONResource-consumer interactions often have important effects on the performance of both partners and the distribution, and abundance of consumers is expected to match the spatio-temporal distribution of their resources. Resource use by insect herbivores is often conditioned by oviposition site selection by females. As larval stages usually show low mobility, insect oviposition preferences are predicted to match the spatial and temporal distribution of host plants suitable for offspring development (Gripenberg, Mayhew, Parnell, &

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The biology and ecology of the large blue butterfly Phengaris (Maculinea) arion: a review

Cited by 18 publications

References 61 publications

Parasitic cuckoo catfish exploit parental responses to stray offspring

Parasitic cuckoo catfish exploit parental responses to stray offspring

Incipient sympatric speciation via host race formation in Phengaris arion (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae)

Resource overlap and dilution effects shape host plant use in a myrmecophilous butterfly

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