REU: How Plant Architecture Mediates Interactions Between Herbivorous Insects and Their Predators

这项研究将考察植物结构对涉及瓢虫和蚜虫的捕食者-猎物相互作用的影响。这个假设是，通过改变搜索捕食者在植物之间移动的方式，植物结构可以显著影响这些捕食者对猎物种群的影响。这项研究是通过获得具有显著不同结构的豌豆突变株来实现的。调查将包括：对个别瓢虫的观察，收集关于瓢虫种群如何相对于零星分散的豌豆蚜虫重新分布的数据，研究瓢虫-蚜虫种群在中等时间段(3-6周)内的种群变化，以及开发基于行为的模型，将个人行为外推到种群动态。作为额外的奖励，美国农业部将很快将这两种瓢虫--七星瓢虫和杂色瓢虫--集体引入华盛顿州。当它们在华盛顿各地被释放时，将获得的关于它们觅食生物学的背景信息应该有助于理解这些“入侵生物”。

This research will examine the influence of plant architecture on a predator-prey interactions involving ladybugs and aphids. The hypothesis is that by altering how searching predators move between plants, plant architecture can markedly affect the impact of those predators on prey populations. This study is made possible by the availability of mutant strains of peas that possess strikingly different architectures. The investigation will include: observations of individual ladybugs, data collection on how populations of ladybugs redistribute themselves with respect to patchily dispersed pea aphids, studies of population change in ladybug-aphid associations over moderate time periods (3-6 weeks), and the development of behavior-based models that extrapolate individual behavior to population dynamics. As a bonus, the two ladybug species, Coccinella septempuncta and Hippodamia variegata, will soon be introduced en masse to the State of Washington by the USDA. The background information on their foraging biology that will be obtained should help understand these "invading organisms" when they are released throughout Washington.