Larval predation on different instars in blowfly populations

Autor(es)

Lucas Del Bianco Faria ^[1] ; Wesley Augusto Conde Godoy ^[2] ; Sérgio Furtado dos Reis ^[3]

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Universidade Estadual Paulista. Instituto de Biociências. Departamento de Parasitologia - Brasil

^[2] Universidade Estadual Paulista. Instituto de Biociências. Departamento de Parasitologia - Brasil

^[3] Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Instituto de Biologia. Departamento de Parasitologia - Brasil

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: Brazilian Archives of Biology and Technology; v. 47, n. 6, p. 887-894, 2004-11-00.
• Área do conhecimento: Ciências Biológicas - Ecologia
• Assunto(s): Canibalismo animal Insetos predadores Comportamento predatório animal Larva

Resumo

During its larval stage, Chrysomya albiceps (Diptera: Calliphoridae) is a facultative predator on other blowflies. In this study, we evaluated the predation by third instar larvae of C. albiceps on first, second and third instar larvae of Chrysomya megacephala and Cochliomyia macellaria in no-choice experiments in order to compare the vulnerability of larval instars to predation. With first and second instar prey the highest predation rate by C. albiceps was on C. megacephala. For third instar prey, the highest predation rate was on C. macellaria. With second instar prey, there was complete predation on C. megacephala within 90 min, whereas in C. macellaria only 55% of the larvae were eaten by 90 min. For third instar prey most predation on C. macellaria (80%) occurred within 90 min, whereas in C. megacephala only 35% of the larvae were eaten by 90 min. Chrysomya albiceps changes the predatory behavior on its preys depending on which instar and species it will consume. (AU)