08:30 - 10:30
Wed-S3
Room: Conde de Cantanhede Theatre
Chair/s:
Diogo Manoel, Melanie Maya Kaelberer
Host plant constancy in ovipositing Manduca sexta
Oral presentation
Nandita Nataraj, Elisabeth Adam, Bill S Hansson, Markus Knaden
Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany.
Insects face complex blends of odors and various color spectrums from their host and non-host plants. To choose an oviposition site, the insects, hence, utilize a combination of visual, olfactory, and gustatory senses. From feeding behavior it is known, that nectar-feeding insects generally target those flower species that they have already experienced as they obviously associate olfactory and/or visual cues from those flowers with the nectar reward they gained. This experience-dependent change of foraging preference is called “flower constancy”. Various studies have shown that flower constancy might benefit an insect by reducing its handling cost. At the same time, flower constancy benefits the plants as it guarantees pollen transfer to flowers from conspecifics. The tobacco hawkmoth Manduca sexta is a crepuscular insect that both rely on olfactory cues and visual cues for locating flowers as well as potential host plants for oviposition. In this study we show that Manduca females exhibit oviposition constancy, i.e. they prefer host plants they have already oviposited on. We further investigate, whether the moth profit from this experience-based change in preference and how long they remember the host plant they have experienced already.