THE EFFECT OF VARIABILITY ON HOST FEEDING AND REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS IN PARASITOIDS

We model the behaviour of a solitary parasitoid that can either eat a host or lay an egg on it. When the parasitoid does not die as a result of starvation, it should always lay an egg on a host. We compute the parasitoid's lifetime reproductive success in this case, and illustrate the effects of the mean time to find hosts and the variance in this time. We then develop a state-dependent model in which the decision to eat the host or lay an egg on it depend on the parasitoid's state. This model is used to explore the effects of variability in the time to find hosts on the parasitoid's lifetime reproductive success. It is shown that there can be a non-monotonic relationship between reproductive success and variability.