Learning affects the preference for parasitized hosts of the facultative kleptoparasitoid Eupelmus vuilleti

Abstract

For a facultative kleptoparasite, the decision to allocate time and energy to search for a prey or for a kleptoparasite opportunity could be influenced by its prior experience. In this study, we investigated the influence of experience on the proportion of the facultative kleptoparasitoid Eupelmus vuilleti females choosing an unparasitized host or a host parasitized by Dinarmus basalis. When exploiting hosts previously parasitized by D. basalis, a large proportion of E. vuilleti females reused the hole drilled by the D. basalis female, which led to a reduction in the time needed to reach the host. When submitted to successive choice tests between an unparasitized host and a host parasitized by D. basalis in a natural host-plant system, the proportion of E. vuilleti females which choose the parasitized host increased with the female experience. The same experiment carried out with an artificial host-plant system allowing an easy access to the host did not show a variation of the females’ choice with experience. A reward—here a faster access to the host through the hole drilled by the D. basalis female—seems necessary to mediate the associative learning expressed by the preferential choice of the parasitized host.