Honeydew production and honeydew sugar composition of polyphagous black bean aphid, Aphis fabae (Hemiptera: Aphididae) on various host plants and implications for ant-attendance
By M. Fischer, W. Völkl, K. Hoffmann. 2005
116 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The black bean aphid, Aphis fabae, is polyphagous and its life cycle involves seasonal migration between summer and winter host plants. The aphids are regularly tended by honeydew-collecting ants. This study investigates whether differences exist in honeydew production and honeydew sugar composition for A. fabae subspecies feeding on various host plants and whether such dif- ferences reflect differences in the intensity of ant-atttendance ( Lasius niger). A. f. fabae feeding on the perennial summer host, Tanacetum vulgare, produced twice the amount of honeydew (ca. 110 µg per aphid . h -1 ) than when feeding on the annual host plants Vicia faba or Chenopodium album. Honeydew production of A. f. cirsiia- canthoides feeding on the creeping thistle Cirsium arvense was the highest measured in this study (ca. 150 µg per aphid . h -1 ). Total sugar concentration in the honeydew of A. f. fabae did not differ when feeding on various summer hosts, whereas the honeydew of A. f. cirsiiacanthoides on C. arvense contained a significantly higher amount of total sugars. The trisaccharide melezitose was the dominant sugar in all the honeydew samples, except for the honeydew of A. f. fabae and A. f. evonymi feeding on the woody winter host plant Evonymus europaeus. The highest proportion of melezitose (80% of total sugars) was found in the honeydew of A. f. cirsi- iacanthoides feeding on C. arvense. In this subspecies, the intensity of ant-attendance was also highest. The results confirm our hypothesis, that the sugar richness of the honeydew (rate of honeydew secretion × total sugar concentration) along with the presence of the attractant sugar melezitose are the critical factors in determining the extent of ant-attendance. In A. f. fabae feeding on the spindle tree E. europaeus, the total sugar concentration of the honeydew as well as the sugar composi- tion differed significantly between generations.
Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Insect Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/55764f25fafee1b69ad07edcf76b8c2010456126
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
In Genetics
In Insect Science
Citations in the corpus
- Aphid–ant mutualism: how honeydew sugars influence the behaviour of ant scouts (2010, background): “Honeydew composition is variable depending on the tended aphid species (Völkl et al., 1999), on the aphid instars (Fischer et al., 2002) or on the host plants inhabited by sap feeders (Völkl et al., 1999; Fischer & Shingleton, 2001; Fischer et al., 2005).”