Reproductive allocation from reserves and income in butterfly species with differing adult diets

Abstract

Allocation of stored and incoming nutrients to reproduction determines an organism’s age-specific fecundity curve. In holometabolous insects, differences among species in the shape of the curve are correlated with differences in the potential importance of adult food to reproduction. I examined allocation patterns underlying this association. Specific changes throughout life in body mass and reproductive effort were predicted to result from use of stored vs. incoming nutrients for reproduction and other metabolic needs at each age. Data for three nymphalid butterfly species, Euphydryas editha, Speyeria mormonia, and Heliconius charitonius, were compared with the predictions. These three species differ in adult diet and fraction of oocytes mature at adult emergence (hence, potential for adult nutrients to be used to make eggs), with E. editha showing the least potential for use of adult nutrients in egg production and H. charitonius showing the greatest potential. For all three species, body mass declined with age, although nonlinearly for E. editha. This indicated that metabolic expenditures were greater than intake at all ages, and that a constant fraction of stored nutrients was allocated to reproduction and other metabolic uses at each age for E. editha. Reproductive effort also declined with age for all three species. The specific patterns seen suggested that incoming nutrients may be stored, to some extent, early in life and then used late in life by both S. mormonia and H. charitonius. The similarity between S. mormonia and H. charitonius is rather surprising, given the qualitative differences in adult diet and suggests either that qualitative age-specific allocation patterns for incoming vs. stored nutrients may be independent of adult diet quality, or that the observed patterns are constrained by phylogenetic relatedness of these two species.

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