Juvenile hormone manipulation affects female reproductive status and aggressiveness in a non-social parasitoid wasp

Abstract

In vertebrates, titers of androgens such as testosterone are known to upregulate aggressive behaviors associated with reproduction. In insects, juvenile hormone (JH) is a good candidate for studying the flexibility of insect endocrine responses because it has important effects on both reproductive processes and behavior. JH has a gonadotropic effect across a broad range of insect species, increasing ovarian development in females, and may have a role in the regulation of aggressive behavior during competition. In Hymenoptera, the functions of JH have been studied in facultatively eusocial species such as polistine wasps, bumblebees, ants and bees. Surprisingly, no work has yet focused on the relationship between JH, reproduction and aggressiveness in a non-social Hymenoptera, although it may help to understand how JH actions have evolved across taxa with different degrees of sociality. Here, we explored how JH treatment influenced: i) female reproductive status, and ii) the intensity (aggressiveness) and resolution of conflict, in Eupelmus vuilleti (Hymenoptera: Eupelmidae), a solitary ectoparasitoid wasp in which females fight over hosts. We demonstrated that intra-abdominal injections of JH increased the number of mature eggs in females after 24 h. In addition, the number of aggressive behaviors displayed by females was affected by the interaction between JH treatment and the number of mature eggs in their abdomen, but mature egg load alone predicted the outcome of staged contests. Wasps were more aggressive when they had more ready-to-lay eggs, with this effect being stronger when females were injected with JH. Moreover, females won more frequently when they had higher mature egg load. Our results highlight how JH affects egg maturation and aggressive behaviors in Eupelmus vuilleti females. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that hormone manipulation can modulate females’ reproduction status and behavior during intraspecific competition over hosts in a non-social hymenopteran parasitoid.