Instruct: Identify the main category of Biorxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Sexual and developmental variations of ecto-parasitism in damselflies The prevalence and intensity of parasitism can have different fitness costs between sexes, and across species and developmental stages. This variation could arise because of species specific sexual and developmental differences in body condition, immunity, and resistance. Theory predicts that the prevalence of parasitism will be greater in individuals with poor body condition and the intensity of parasitism will be greater in individuals with larger body size. These predictions have been tested and verified in vertebrates. In insects, however, contradictory evidence has been found in different taxa. Here, we tested these predictions on two species of Agriocnemis (Agriocnemis femina and Agriocnemis pygmaea) damselflies, which are parasitized by Arrenurus water mite ectoparasites. We measured body weight, total body length, abdomen area and thorax area of non-parasitized damselflies and found body condition varied between males and females, between immature females and mature females and between A. femina and A. pygmaea. Then, we calculated the parasite prevalence, i.e., the frequency of parasitism and intensity, i.e., the number of parasites per infected damselfly in eleven natural populations of both species. In line to our predictions, we observed greater prevalence in immature females than mature females but found no difference in parasite prevalence between males and females. Furthermore, we found that parasite load was higher in females than males and in immature females than mature females. Our result also showed that the frequency and intensity of parasitism varied between the two studied species, being higher in A. pygmaea than A. femina. Our study provides evidence that parasitism impacts sexes, developmental stages and species differentially and suggests that variation may occur due to sex, developmental stage, and species-specific resistance and tolerance mechanism.
16
The categories of this paper are: microbiology
0
The categories of this paper are: genetics
20
The categories of this paper are: pharmacology
13
The categories of this paper are: animal
9
The categories of this paper are: synthetic
21
The categories of this paper are: toxicology
14
The categories of this paper are: biophysics
19
The categories of this paper are: epidemiology
28
The categories of this paper are: communication
6
The categories of this paper are: plant
10
The categories of this paper are: and
26
The categories of this paper are: biochemistry
17
The categories of this paper are: molecular
8
The categories of this paper are: genomics
23
The categories of this paper are: immunology
22
The categories of this paper are: physiology