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Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant - PubMed

  • ️Mon Jan 01 2018

Standing on the shoulders of giants: young aphids piggyback on adults when searching for a host plant

Moshe Gish et al. Front Zool. 2018.

Abstract

Background: Upon the detection of imminent peril, pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum) often drop off their host plant. Dropping in response to insect enemies is intermittent in nature, but when a mammalian herbivore feeds on their host plant, a large mixed-age group of aphids usually drops off the plant at once. Aphids that reach the ground are confronted with new, hostile environmental conditions and must therefore quickly walk toward a suitable host plant. The longer it takes an aphid to reach a host plant, the more it is exposed to the risks of starvation, desiccation and predation.

Results: We found that young nymphs, which have limited mobility and high mortality on the ground, quickly climb on conspecific (not necessarily parental) adults and cling to them before the latter start walking in search of a plant. This "riding" behavior is likely to be adaptive for the nymphs, for it shortens their journey and the time they spend off a host plant. Adults however, seem to be irritated by the riding nymphs, as they often actively try to remove them.

Conclusions: After dropping from the host plant, young aphid nymphs travel at least part of the way back to a plant on the backs of adults. For the riding behavior to take place, nymphs need to successfully find adults and withstand removal attempts.

Keywords: Hitchhiking; Host location; Parent-offspring conflict; Parental care; Phoresy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Not applicable.Not applicable.The authors declare that they have no competing interests.Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1

a A typical riding behavior of a fist-instar pea aphid nymph on an adult, after dropping off the host plant. b A nymph reaching a host plant on the back of an adult

Fig. 2
Fig. 2

Riding positions of pea aphid nymphs on adults. The data refers to the riding of a single nymph on each adult. Dorsal facing forward: the riding position seen in Fig. 1; Dorsal facing backward / sideways: same as the previous position, with the nymph facing backwards or sideways, respectively. On ventral side: on any part of the adult’s body which is not the dorsum or the posterior end

Fig. 3
Fig. 3

Duration of riding events of pea aphid nymphs on different objects. First instar nymphs were dropped onto an arena with small plastic beads, an arena with dead adult aphids and a large arena with live adults. The live adults were tracked until there were no more nymphs on them. Different letters above bars indicate significant differences

Fig. 4
Fig. 4

The effect of riding on adult movement: X axis denotes the highest number of nymphs that were observed on the adult’s body simultaneously, throughout the time it was in the arena. For each highest number of nymphs there was a different number of adults that were included in that category (numbers given underneath the X axis)

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