Host‐Plant Selection and Predation Risk for Offspring of the Parent Bug

Abstract

Herbivores, especially specialists, must adapt to characteristics of their host to survive and reproduce successfully (Hardin and Tallamy1992). If offspring survival among different hosts varies, natural selection should lead females to choose egg-laying sites where performance of the progeny will be highest. This is especially true when newly hatched larvae cannot move to another host (Singer 1986), or when searching for new hosts would cause heavy mortality (Singer and Mandracchia 1982). A number of studies have shown that females that search for oviposition sites respond to plant characteristics that are correlated with the nutritional quality of plants for their offspring (e.g., Myers 1985, Damman and Feeny 1988). Also, secondary chemicals of plants play an essential part in determining whether the plant is suitable for oviposition (e.g., Feeny et al. 1985). Furthermore, females may detect visually or chemically the presence of other conspecific and nonconspecific competitors already on a potential host (Rothschild and Schoonhoven 1977, Rausher 1979, Mappes and Makela 1993). However, one of the most important selective agents driving the evolution of behavioral adaptations of prey animals is predation (Endler 1991), and for herbivorous insects, natural enemies commonly represent the major source of mortality (Myers 1981, Feeny et al. 1985). Thus, predation as well as plant characteristics could influence both oviposition behavior and offspring performance on the host (Bernays and Graham 1988). At the moment, however, there is very little empirical ev-