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Chemical defense and tonic immobility in early life stages of the Harlequin cabbage bug, Murgantia histrionica (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae)

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Abstract

Antipredation strategies contribute to the lifetime reproductive success of organisms, particularly in more vulnerable life stages that look to survive until reproduction. In insects, eggs and larval stages are often immobile or unable to rapidly flee and hide from predators. Understanding what alternative antipredation strategies they use, but also how these change over development time, is required to fully appreciate how species adapt to biotic threats. Murgantia histrionica is a stink bug, conspicuously colored from egg to adult, known to sequester defensive glucosinolates from its cruciferous hosts as adults. We sought to assess whether this chemical defense is also present in its eggs and early nymphal instars and quantified how it fluctuates among life stages. In parallel, we looked at an alternative antipredation strategy, described for the first time in this species: tonic immobility (i.e., death feigning). We also qualitatively investigated ultraviolet reflectance in eggs and adults as a proxy of conspicuousness against UV-absorbing leaves. Our results show that the eggs are significantly more chemically defended than the first two but not third mobile life stages, yet compound concentrations do not statistically differ across nymphal instars. Tonic immobility is favored by hatchlings, but less so by subsequent instars. Eggs also had obvious ultraviolet reflectance, suggesting that they would contrast against a leaf substrate and, considering their chemical load, that they may be aposematic. We argue that there are two possible interpretations of our results. One is that, throughout ontogeny, tonic immobility is a useful defensive strategy until adequate chemical protection is achieved over an extended feeding period. The other is that both aposematism and tonic immobility are used by this species, but variation in strategy use throughout ontogeny is decoupled.

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Data availability

Data is available on Dryad (Guerra-Grenier et al. 2021, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tmpg4f4zg).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Paul K. Abram, Sophie Potter, Changku Kang, Felipe Dargent, Casey Peet-Paré, Tammy Duong, Yolanda Yip, Ian Dewan, Lauren Efford, Karl Loeffler-Henry, Gustavo L. Rezende, Greg Bulté, Naomi Cappuccino, Mark Forbes, and Andrew Simons for helpful discussions and/or technical assistance. We also thank Donald C. Weber for sending us eggs of Murgantia histrionica to build our lab colony, as well as two anonymous reviewers for suggestions that improved this manuscript. A previous version of this paper has previously been available on BioRxiv (https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.29.428818).

Funding

This research was supported by a FRQNT postgraduate scholarship to EG-G, NSERC grants to RL, JTA and an NSERC Discovery grant to TNS.

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  1. Eric Guerra-Grenier

    Present address: Redpath Museum, McGill University, 859 Sherbrooke W, Montreal, QC, H3A 0C4, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel by Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Eric Guerra-Grenier & Thomas N. Sherratt

  2. Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, 30 Marie-Curie, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada

    Rui Liu & John T. Arnason

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  1. Eric Guerra-Grenier
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  2. Rui Liu
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Contributions

Conceptualization, EG-G, RL, JTA, TNS; Methodology, EG-G, RL, JTA, TNS; Investigation, EG-G, RL; Formal Analysis, EG-G, RL, TNS; Writing—Original Draft, EG-G, RL; Writing—Review and Editing, EG-G, RL, JTA, TNS; Supervision, JTA, TNS; Funding Acquisition, JTA, TNS.

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Correspondence to Eric Guerra-Grenier.

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Guerra-Grenier, E., Liu, R., Arnason, J.T. et al. Chemical defense and tonic immobility in early life stages of the Harlequin cabbage bug, Murgantia histrionica (Heteroptera: Pentatomidae). Evol Ecol 35, 669–685 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-021-10133-w

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