Abstract
The rise of temperatures may enable species to increase their activities during winter periods and to occupy new areas. In winter, resource density is low for most species and an increased number of active consumers during this season may produce heightened competitive pressure. In Western France, the aphid parasitoid species Aphidius avenae Haliday has been known to adopt a winter diapausing strategy adjacent to newly sown cereal crops, until recent reports of active winter populations in cereal crops. We investigate how the addition of this species to the winter guild of parasitoids may change the structure of the aphid–parasitoid food web and the host-exploitation strategies of previously occurring parasitoids. We showed that in winter, Aphidius avenae was mostly associated with two aphid species, Sitobion avenae Fabricius and Metopolophium dirhodum Walker, while the generalist species Aphidius rhopalosiphi was restricted to the aphid species Rhopalosiphum padi L. in the presence of Aphidius avenae. Due to this new competition, winter food webs present a higher degree of compartmentalization and lower proportional similarity index values than spring ones. Parasitoid and aphid abundances responded significantly to changes in daily high temperatures, suggesting that the host–parasitoid community structure can be partly predicted by climate. This study demonstrates how a change in the winter strategy of one species of a guild can modify complex interspecific relationships in host–parasitoid systems.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) Landscaphid program (ANR-09-STRA-05) and by the Région Bretagne. All field and laboratory work conducted in this study complies with French legal requirements. We are grateful to Maxime Hervé, Valérie Briand, Christoph Nicolai, Ludmilla Martin, Cécile Gérardin, Mayida El-Souki, Magali Granger, Camille Puech, Philippe Louâpre and Delphine Eoche-Bosy for the technical support provided. We thank Jacques Brodeur (University of Montreal) for reading previous versions of this manuscript. We thank Dr Lucy Alford for improving our English.
Author contribution statement
T. O. A., Y. O., L. K. and J. V. B. conceived and designed the fieldwork and the analyses. T. O. A. conducted the fieldwork experiments. T. O. A., V. B. and Y. O. analysed the data. T. O. A., Y. O. and J. V. B. wrote the manuscript; other authors provided editorial advice. J. V. B. and Y. O. contributed equally to the supervision of this study and are thus co-last authors.
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Communicated by George Heimpel.
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Andrade, T.O., Krespi, L., Bonnardot, V. et al. Impact of change in winter strategy of one parasitoid species on the diversity and function of a guild of parasitoids. Oecologia 180, 877–888 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3502-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-015-3502-4