The effect of development time on the fitness of female Trichogramma evanescens

Abstract

Trichogramma are facultative gregarious egg parasitoids that attack a wide range of lepidopterous eggs. Because hosts in which parasitoids develop vary in terms of available food, the progeny produced by parasitoid females vary in size and fitness. While one might expect that the developmental rate and emergence rhythm should be similar for all individuals reared under the same environmental conditions, variations in the duration of development of individuals reared under uniform conditions have been found in several insect species. In the Hymenopteran egg parasitoid Trichogramma evanescens Westwood (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) adults emerge at the beginning of the photoperiod on two consecutive days. Longer development may influence the fitness of adults and have an impact on mating opportunities. Size, longevity and daily and lifetime fecundity were measured for female T. evanescens that developed in nine and ten days. We observed a significant relationship between size and both longevity and lifetime fecundity. While early emerging females did not live longer and did not produce progeny with a different sex-ratio than females that emerged later, they were larger and produced more progeny than late females. We conclude that early emerging females have a higher fitness than late emerging females T. evanescens.