Water-seeking behavior in insects harboring hairworms: should the host collaborate?

David G. Biron, Fleur Ponton, Cécile Joly, Aurélie Menigoz, Ben Hanelt and Frédéric Thomas

Behavioral Ecology, 2005, vol. 16, issue 3, 656-660

Abstract: We explored the idea that hosts infected with manipulative parasites might mitigate the costs of infection by collaborating with the parasite rather than resisting it. Nematomorphs are usually considered to be manipulative parasites of arthropods because they cause hosts to seek an aquatic environment, which is needed by the adult parasite. We placed infected cricket hosts in situations of forced noncompliance and compared some fitness parameters (life expectancy, gonad development, and reproductive behaviors) in noncompliant hosts and hosts allowed to express parasite-induced behavior. Compared to uninfected controls, reduced survival was observed in both males and females from the two categories of infected hosts, collaborative or not. A substantial proportion of collaborative females produced eggs or had developed ovaries while such phenomena were never observed among noncollaborative ones. Collaborative females retained a nymphal phenotype, but adult males nevertheless courted and produced spermatophores to such females. However, collaborative females had difficulties mounting males, taking spermatophores and/or ovipositing. In contrast to females, all males were entirely castrated by the parasite regardless of their behavior, collaborative or not. Thus, bringing the parasite into water does not effectively mitigate the costs of infection for the host. Copyright 2005.

Keywords: host collaboration; host manipulation; Nematomorpha; Orthoptera (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/ari039 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:16:y:2005:i:3:p:656-660

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().