Do age 和 diet interact to affect fall webworm parasitism?

Bottom-up (host plant) 和 top-down (natural enemy) pressures both can affect how insect herbivores select their host plants. Here we investigated which fall webworm (Hyphantria cunea, hereafter FW) parasitoids, an important natural enemy for FW, attack FW at different ontogenetic stages in the field on different host plants. To determine whether FW parasitism was dependent on the FW developmental stage, we placed FW early (8-10 days till hatching) 和 late term (12-13 days till hatching) eggs 和 10-day old larvae, 和 20-day old larvae at field sites in Boulder, 科罗拉多(美国). We deployed both the eggs 和 larvae on 4 host plants commonly eaten by FW in Colorado: chokecherry, 黑色的柳树, narrowleaf杨木, 还有薄叶桤木. We kept eggs 和 larvae at the field sites for one week before retrieving these samples. We are currently rearing collected FW eggs 和 larvae to pupation in the lab 和 collecting emerging parasitoids. All parasitoids will be identified to the lowest taxon possible. Our results will contribute to underst和ing the ontogenetic stages that specific parasitoid species attack. Our research will help us to underst和 the host selection process among parasitoids of a local herbivore.