The mass and temperature dependence of parasitoid interactions

Type: Literature & Meta-study, Conceptional Theory in foraging
Degree: Suitable for Bachelor or Master thesis
Description: Feeding in predators, filter feeders and herbivores is direct in that foraging effort of an individual directly results in food. Parasitoids, however, follow a different strategy. The adults lay eggs on their hosts and the food resource is not available to the individual who obtained the food, but rather its offspring. Therefore, to understand population dynamics or the ability to act as biocontrol agents in the context of global change it is necessary to understand both mechanisms. The parasitation rates of adults are generally measured as functional responses (1). Many studies have documented the temperature dependence of these interactions for specific species pairs (2–4). However, a generalizing meta-study as for predators (5,6) is lacking. Also, parasitation rates are only one side of the story. To actually estimate the total impact of the parasiotoids it is necessary to know how fast the larvae consumes the prey and how long the prey stays alive. The student will collect studies on parasitation rates and larval development of parasitoids from published literature (this would be two topics for bachelor theses) and analyse the aggregated data using statistical methods in R.
Requirements: You should be interested in ecological principles such as Metabolic Theory of Ecology. Moreover, experience in literature mining using ISI Web of Science of Google Scholar as well as experience in the statistical software “R” are beneficial.
Start Date: Anytime
Contact(s): Björn Rall, Amrei Binzer & Anthony I. Dell
Literature:
1. Holling CS. Some characteristics of simple types of predation and parasitism. Canad. Entomol. 1959;91(7):385–98.
2. Menon A, Flinn PW, Dover BA. Influence of temperature on the functional response of Anisopteromalus calandrae (Hymenoptera : Pteromalidae), a parasitoid of Rhyzopertha dominica (Coleoptera : Bostrichidae). J. Stored Prod. Res. 2002;38(5):463–9.
3. Flinn PW, Hagstrum DW. Temperature-mediated functional response of Theocolax elegans (Hymenoptera : Pteromalidae) parasitizing Rhyzopertha dominica (Coleoptera : Bostrichidae) in stored wheat. J. Stored Prod. Res. 2002;38(2):185–90.
4. Zamani A, Talebi A, Fathipour Y, Baniameri V. Temperature-dependent functional response of two aphid parasitoids, Aphidius colemani and Aphidius matricariae (Hymenoptera : Aphidiidae), on the cotton aphid. J. Pest Sci. 2006 Nov;79(4):183–8.
5. Rall BC, Brose U, Hartvig M, Kalinkat G, Schwarzmüller F, Vucic-Pestic O, et al. Universal temperature and body-mass scaling of feeding rates. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 2012 May 11;367(1605):2923–34.
6. Englund G, Öhlund G, Hein CL, Diehl S. Temperature dependence of the functional response. Ecol. Lett. 2011 Sep 1;14(9):914–21.