Knowing your habitat: linking patch-encounter rate and patch exploitation in parasitoids

Habitat assessment by parasitoids: mechanisms for patch use behavior

Cédric Tentelier, Emmanuel Desouhant, and Xavier Fauvergue Unité Mixte de Recherche 1112, Réponse des Organismes aux Stress Environmentaux, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, 400 route des Chappes BP 167, 06903 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France and Unité Mixte de Recherche 5558 ‘‘Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive,’’ Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 43 Boulevard du 11 novembre 1918, 6962...

ON Parasitoids use herbivore - induced information to adapt patch exploitation behaviour CÉDRIC TENTELIER , ERIC WAJNBERG and XAVIER FAUVERGUE

1. Optimal foraging models ultimately predict that female parasitoids should exploit rich host patches for longer than poorer ones. At the proximate level, mechanistic models and experimental studies show that parasitoids use both chemicals produced by their hosts and direct encounters with their hosts to estimate patch quality. Although it has been extensively studied in the context of host lo...

Density-Dependent Patch Exploitation and Acquisition of Environmental Information

We study density-dependent resource harvest patterns due to Bayesian foraging for different distributions of resources. We first consider a forager with information about the stochastic properties of its environment. In this case we show that when the number of food items per patch follows a distribution from the exponential family, the density dependence is given by the ratio sigma2/μ of th...

Patch exploitation as choice: symmetric choice in an asymmetric situation?

Patch exploitation by Tribolium castaneum: movement patterns, distribution, and oviposition

Stored-product insects often live in an environment of spatially separated food patches that vary considerably in size, quality, and persistence. The movement of individuals among patches of food influences the probability that stored products will become infested and pest populations will persist within storage facilities, thus affecting many aspects of pest management. We examined how a major...