Abstract
This study focuses on two competing species, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae), both invasive mosquitoes of the New World. Context-specific competition between immature forms inside containers seems to be an important determinant of the coexistence or displacement of each species in different regions of the world. Here, competition experiments developed at low density (one, two or three larvae) and receiving four different resource food concentration, were designed to test whether Ae. albopictus and Ae. aegypti respond differently to competition, and whether competition can be attributed to a simple division of resources. Three phenotypic traits - larval development, adult survival under starvation and wing length - were used as indicators of performance. Larvae of neither species were limited by resource concentration when they were alone, unlike when they developed with competitors. The presence of conspecifics affected Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus, inducing slower development, reduced survival and wing length. The response to resource limitation was different when developing with heterospecifics: Ae. aegypti developing with one heterospecific showed faster development, producing smaller adults with shorter lives, while in the presence of two competitors, development increased and adults lived longer. Aedes albopictus demonstrated a better performance when developing with heterospecifics, with no loss in their development period and improved adult survival. Overall, our results suggest that response to competition can not simply be attributed to the division of resources, and that larvae of both species presented large phenotypic plasticity in their response to the presence or absence of heterospecifics and conspecifics.
Highlights
This study focuses on two competing species, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae), both invasive mosquitoes of the New World [1]
Context-specific competition between Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus immature forms—which takes place inside natural and/ or artificial larval breeding sites varying in size, shape and food resource availability,seems to be an important determinant for the Ae. aegypti exclusion in Florida [2,3], the coexistence of both species in Brazil, Cameroon and Nigeria [4,5,6] and the Ae. albopictus exclusion in Leticia, Colombia [7]
Aedes aegypti: Larval development time was similar between the sexes (M = 6.48±1.08 days and F = 6.84±1.13 days; D = 0.1274, P = 0.1525)
Summary
This study focuses on two competing species, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae), both invasive mosquitoes of the New World [1]. Mechanisms of mating interference of Ae. albopictus males on Ae. aegypti females causing the sterilization of the latter, have been proposed to explain the spatial segregation of these species in some areas [8,9]; beyond this, sharing space with other container dwelling species may leads to competition, predation and other types of ecological interactions, and this situation leads to a limitation in the amount of available food [10,11]. Many studies have investigated the environmental factors associated with the different competition outcomes, looking at life history traits. Life history theory seeks to explain organism evolutionary characteristics such as adaptive response to environmental variation, differences in mortality or resource allocation in life stages, examining how they are correlated and influenced by ecological factors [12,13]. The resource availability during initial life stages [14], environmental stress degree, as well as resource competition [15], greatly influences individual life history traits [12,16,17], such as metamorphosis, maturation, and reproduction; the population’s success can be influenced by the timing of these events and by the overall condition of the organisms [18,19,20]
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