Abstract
Experience is well known to affect sensory-guided behaviors in many herbivorous insects. Here, we investigated the effects of natural feeding experiences of Helicoverpa armigera larvae on subsequent preferences of larval approaching and feeding, as well as the effect of host-contacting experiences of mated females on subsequent ovipositional preference. The results show that the extent of experience-induced preference, expressed by statistical analysis, depended on the plant species paired with the experienced host plant. Larval feeding preference was much easier to be induced by natural feeding experience than larval approaching preference. Naïve larvae, reared on artificial diet, exhibited clear host-ranking order as follows: tobacco ≥ cotton > tomato > hot pepper. Feeding experiences on hot pepper and tobacco could always induce positive feeding preference, while those on cotton often induced negative effect, suggesting that the direction of host plant experience-induced preference is not related to innate feeding preference. Inexperienced female adults ranked tobacco as the most preferred ovipositional host plant, and this innate preference could be masked or weakened but could not be reversed by host-contacting experience after emergence.
Highlights
Experience is well known to affect various sensory-guided behaviors in parasitoids and social insects, but there is increasing evidence that it influences host plant choice in herbivorous insects [1]
We investigated the effect of natural feeding experiences of H. armigera larvae with cotton, tobacco, tomato, and hot pepper, on subsequent approaching preference and feeding preferencethe, as well as the effect of host-contacting experiences of female moths on subsequent ovipositional preference
After subjected to different experiences, larval feeding preference of H. armigera was much easier to be induced by feeding experience, compared with larval approaching preference as well as adult ovipositional preference
Summary
Experience is well known to affect various sensory-guided behaviors in parasitoids and social insects, but there is increasing evidence that it influences host plant choice in herbivorous insects [1]. The effect of natural feeding experience on subsequent larval feeding preference, as well as the effect of adult host-contacting experience on ovipositional preference. Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner) is one of the major polyphagous insects in the subfamily [10], whose host plant range includes at least 60 crop species, such as cotton, tobacco, tomato, corn, wheat, soybean, and hot pepper and 67 wild plant species from about 30 plant families including Malvaceae, Solanaceae, Gramineae, and Leguminosae [11]. We investigated the effect of natural feeding experiences of H. armigera larvae with cotton, tobacco, tomato, and hot pepper, on subsequent approaching preference and feeding preferencethe, as well as the effect of host-contacting experiences of female moths on subsequent ovipositional preference. We addressed the following questions: (1) among the three behaviors mentioned above, which is the easiest to be reshaped by corresponding prior experience? And (2) Does the direction of induced preference depend on the plant environment in which the bioassay was conducted?
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