Bidirectional selection of walking velocity, associated behavioral syndrome and fitness consequences in the maize weevil Sitophilus zeamais

• Ano de defesa: 2017
• Autor(a) principal: Turchen, Leonardo Morais
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Viçosa
• Palavras-chave em Português: Milho - Doenças e pragas; Sitophilus zeamais; Insetos - Comportamento; Grãos - Armazenamento - Doenças e danos; Entomologia Agrícola
• Link de acesso: https://locus.ufv.br//handle/123456789/27142

The individual behavioral types (i.e., personality traits) and their inter-correlations (i.e., behavioral syndrome) are recognized in the arthropods and reveal ecological and evolutionary importance. The issue is also important for applied entomology, where distinct personality types have differ with consequence for the insect fitness. Here, we attempted to understand how within-population variation in personality traits are maintained. Therefore, we focus on selection of a behavioral trait (i.e., walking velocity) to check whether it is inherited and inter-correlated with other personality traits configuring a behavioral syndrome, and their fitness consequences. The maize weevil (Sitophilus zeamais) was used as experimental model to test the above mentioned hypothesis. We detected that walking velocity is inherited and maintained among generations of maize weevil. Furthermore, the selection procedure exhibited impact on the behavioral types allowing us to recognize different behavioral patterns among strains. The multidimensional behavioral constructs of maize weevil personality indicate divergence among personality types within and between strains with stronger contribution of the activity dimension. Lastly, we assessed the inter- relations between walking velocity and the other behavior traits, and behavioral traits with reproductive output. The former indicated the existence of behavioral syndrome in the maize weevil, particularly within the activity dimension. The second indicated that this behavioral dimension, and particularly walking velocity, does affect the reproductive output of maize weevil.