Seasonal Parasitism and Host Instar Preference by the Spruce Budworm (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) Larval Parasitoid<i>Tranosema rostrale</i>(Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The seasonal pattern of parasitism by a parasitoid can be influenced by many factors, such as interspecific competition and host instar preference. We conducted field and laboratory experiments to describe the seasonal pattern of parasitism of spruce budworm Choristoneura fumiferana (Clemens) larvae by Tranosema rostrale (Brischke), and to investigate whether this pattern can be explained by interaction with other parasitoid species, or by host instar preference. Larval survival, developmental time, sex ratio, and adult size of T. rostrale developing in different host instars were also measured to further assess the potential importance of host instar on parasitoid life history. Parasitism by T. rostrale increased over the season, reaching the highest rate during the fourth-instar larva, and then decreased again until the sixth-instar. At the same time, parasitism by another parasitoid, Elachertus cacoeciae (Howard), increased over the season, and multiparasitism with T. rostrale suggests potential competition between these two parasitoids. Tranosema rostrale showed no host instar preference when third- to sixth-instar larvae were exposed simultaneously in a manipulative field experiment. The proportion of females emerging from spruce budworm larvae increased over the season; however, no difference in sex ratio was observed in the manipulative field experiment. Only male pupal development time and adult size were marginally increased in fifth-instar spruce budworm larvae. We conclude that T. rostrale's seasonal phenology or competition with E. cacoeciae, but not host instar preference, were possibly responsible for the observed seasonal pattern of parasitism.
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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".