Effects of delayed mating on male mating success and female reproductive performance of Phenacoccus solenopsis Tinsley (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae)
Introduction
Delayed mating is defined as a condition in which male and/or female mating happens at later stages of life. Age is an important factor that has a strong effect on mating, sexual performance and egg production (Pervez and Richmond, 2004). Greater mating and oviposition occur at the youngest stages of adults otherwise male and female physiology changes with the passage of time; that is why an insect copulation duration has a strong relationship with reproduction pattern and population growth (Jiménez-Pérez and Wang, 2003). Delayed mating in an insect life occurs due to biotic and abiotic factors such as male and female mating disruption, mass trapping, snowfall, light or heavy rainfall, unfavorable temperature and wind (Carde and Minks, 1995). Delayed mating effects on reproduction of different insect orders including Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, Diptera and Hemiptera were reviewed by Wenninger and Averill (2006) and reported that fecundity decrease or remain constant due to delay in mating but not increased. Studies on different insect species showed that delayed mating has a wide range of negative effects on insect longevity, mating success, oviposition and fecundity. It generally shortened the oviposition period and reduced the fecundity due to deposition of unfertilized eggs at an improper time (Foster and Ayers, 1996), less attraction of younger males towards older females for mating (Lingren et al., 1988; Spurgeon et al., 1995), less availability of good quality food and good nutrition during egg development (Proshold, 1996), and low quality and quantity of sperm transformation from older males to females (Unnithan and Paye, 1991; Rogers and Marti Jr, 1994).
The solenopsis mealybug, Phenacoccus solenopsis Tinsley (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae), is a sap-feeding insect native to Central America. It has been recorded from 49 countries in the world on more than 300 host species belonging to 43 plant families (Garcia Morales et al., 2016). The solenopsis mealybug was recently reported in Pakistan, India and China (Wu and Zhang, 2009; Wang et al., 2010), where it represents a serious threat for cotton production (Nagrare et al., 2009; Wu and Zhang, 2009). Many experiments have been carried out on the reproductive biology of P. solenopsis at constant temperatures. Limited studies has been carried out on the effect of female delayed mating on the oviposition period and fecundity of P. solenopsis (Huang et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2015), but these studies did not fully describe the delayed mating reproductive biology of P. solenopsis. Furthermore, male-only and both sexes delayed mating effects on the mating success, reproductive performance and longevity of P. solenopsis are completely silent. Delayed mating effects are important not only for understanding of ecology and behaviour of P. solenopsis but also for its management. Sex pheromones of different mealybug species such as Planococcus ficus Signoret (Hinkens et al., 2001), Pseudococcus viburni Signoret (Millar et al., 2005; Millar and Midland, 2007), Pseudococcus longispinus Targioni Tozzetti (Millar et al., 2009), Pseudococcus maritimus Ehrhorn (Figadere et al., 2007) and P. solenopsis (Tabata and Ichiki, 2016) have been identified. Consequences of delayed mating and application of sex pheromones for creating male and female mating disruption to suppress P. solenopsis population is not still clear under laboratory and field condition. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate and evaluate the impact of male-only, female-only and both sexes delayed mating on the mating success, reproductive performance and longevity of P. solenopsis.
Section snippets
Mealybugs and host plants
Colony of P. solenopsis used in this study was provided by the crop pest ecology and biological control laboratory, Institute of insect sciences, College of agriculture and biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. Since 2015 P. solenopsis colony has been maintained in crop pest ecology and biological control laboratory. The colony of P. solenopsis was maintained on tomato plants (Solanum lycopersicum Mill) grown in plastic pots (13 cm in diameter) with field soils in a climate
Male-only delayed mating
Male-delayed mating negatively affect the female oviposition and fecundity. The prereproductive increased significantly (F = 5.38; df = 5, 157; P < 0.001) whereas the oviposition period (F = 11.56; df = 5, 157; P < 0.001) and fecundity (F = 10.08; df = 5, 157; P < 0.001) were significantly reduced due to male-delayed mating (Table 1). Fecundity declined from 58.3 ± 4.6 eggs per female that mated with 2-h-old male to 32.9 ± 2.7 eggs per female that mated with 74-h-old males. However, female
Discussion
Phenacoccus solenopsis male is short lived and highly aggressive in mating. It's mating frequency increased with increasing number of females (Tong et al., 2019). Without delay in mating, a single male can mates on average 4 females in his whole life (Waqas et al., 2019). In the present experiment delayed mating negatively affect the mating success. Male-only, female-only and both sexes delayed mating reduce the male mating success. Reduction in male mating success due to delay in mating of
Conclusion
Results of our study clearly show that male-only, female-only and both sexes delayed mating reduce the oviposition period and fecundity of P. solenopsis. This reduction in oviposition duration and fecundity could be used as an important tool for the management of cotton mealybug P. solenopsis populations through mating disruption because mating disruption technique proved very effective for the management of vine mealybug P. ficus, as pheromones reduced the number of ovipositing females from
Disclosure
All authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. All authors approved the manuscript and submission to this Journal.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Muhammad Saad Waqas: Writing - original draft, Supervision. Ali Ahmed Zaky Shoaib: Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Asem Saad Saad Elabasy: Writing - original draft. Xinlai Cheng: Methodology, Project administration. Qianqian Zhang: Methodology, Project administration. Zuhua Shi: Supervision, Writing - review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the National Basic Research Program of China [grant number 2009CB119005], [grant number 2006CB102005]; the National 948 Program [grant number 2011-G4]; the National Department Benefit Research Foundation [grant number nyhyzx20110321] for their generous financial support to this research.
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