Sex ratio shift caused by hyperparasitism in the solitary parasitoid Lysiphlebus hirticornis (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Aphidiinae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We examined the influence of offspring mortality caused by hyperparasitism on the secondary sex ratio of Lysiphlebus hirticornis Mackauer, a solitary endoparasitoid of the aphid Metopeurum fuscoviride Stroyan, in the field. Females of L. hirticornis produce pseudo-gregarious broods, which may comprise more than 200 offspring. Hyperparasitoids [mainly Syrphophagus aphidivorus (Mayr)] attacked and killed up to 60% of the primary parasitoids inside mummified aphids, especially late in the season. Hyperparasitized broods were larger than hyperparasitoid-free broods, which suggests that the risk of hyperparasitism increased with mummy density. We tested the hypothesis that mortality caused by hyperparasitism is greater for female than male offspring of L. hirticornis. If mummy quality scales with mummy size, hyperparasitoids should choose the relatively larger over the relatively smaller mummies. In the absence of hyperparasitism, broods of L. hirticornis included approximately two daughters for each son; the sex ratio did not vary with brood size. In hyperparasitized broods, the sex ratio was nearly even. This result indicates that relatively more female offspring (developing in the larger mummies) than male offspring (developing in the smaller mummies) were killed by hyperparasitoids. We propose that sex-differential offspring mortality in L. hirticornis is the result of differences in optimal host choice between the primary parasitoid and the hyperparasitoids.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".