Cannibalism by damselflies increases with rising temperature.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Start D
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5454245 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Predation is ubiquitous in nature. One form of predation is cannibalism, which is affected by many factors such as size structure and resource density. However, cannibalism may also be influenced by abiotic factors such as seasonal time constraints. Since time constraints are greater at high latitudes, cannibalism could be stronger at such latitudes, but we know next to nothing about latitudinal variation in cannibalism. In this study, we examined cannibalism and activity in larvae of the damselfly Lestes sponsa along a latitudinal gradient across Europe. We did this by raising larvae from the egg stage at different temperatures and photoperiods corresponding to different latitudes.We found that the more seasonally time-constrained populations in northern latitudes and individuals subjected to greater seasonal time constraints exhibited a higher level of cannibalism. We also found that activity was higher at north latitude conditions, and thus correlated with cannibalism, suggesting that this behaviour mediates higher levels of cannibalism in time-constrained animals.Our results go counter to the classical latitude-predation pattern which predicts higher predation at lower latitudes, since we found that predation was stronger at higher latitudes. The differences in cannibalism might have implications for population dynamics along the latitudinal gradients, but further experiments are needed to explore this.
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Project description:Models of the evolution of sexual cannibalism argue that males may offset the cost of cannibalism if components of the male body are directly allocated to the eggs that they fertilize. We tested this idea in the praying mantid Tenodera sinensis Males and females were fed differently radiolabelled crickets and allowed to mate. Half of the pairs progressed to sexual cannibalism and we prevented cannibalism in the other half. We assess the relative allocation of both male-derived somatic materials and ejaculate materials into the eggs and soma of the female. Our results show that male somatic investment contributes to production of offspring. The eggs and reproductive tissues of cannibalistic females contained significantly more male-derived amino acids than those of non-cannibalistic females, and there was an increase in the number of eggs produced subsequent to sexual cannibalism. Sexual cannibalism thus increases male material investment in offspring. We also show that males provide substantial investment via the ejaculate, with males passing about 25% of their radiolabelled amino acids to females via the ejaculate even in the absence of cannibalism.
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