DOI: 10.5061/dryad.p2ngf1w0t
title: Data from: Effects of host size on progeny sex and survivorship of Hymenoepimecis pinheirensis

description: Parasitoid larvae consume their hosts to obtain the nutritional resources
 required for their development. Parasitoid wasps can optimally select the
 size of their hosts by laying unfertilised and fertilised eggs according
 to the amount of biomass available for consumption by the larvae. However,
 parasitoids may eventually experience low host availability within the
 optimal range of body sizes, affecting the survival of their offspring. In
 this study, we identified a situation in which all available hosts
 (Leucauge volupis) were smaller than those previously observed to be
 parasitised by Hymenoepimecis pinheirensis at the same study site.
 Therefore, we investigated how these parasitoids can bypass the scarcity
 of ideal hosts. Female wasps biased their oviposition toward the largest
 L. volupis females available. In this suboptimal scenario, they did not
 oviposit only unfertilised eggs, which developed into relatively small
 offspring (males). In this situation, they lay fertilised eggs mainly on
 larger spiders. Larval mortality was high, but the larvae attached to the
 larger spiders were more likely to complete their development. In general,
 H. pinheirensis females managed to target the best hosts available, but
 could not delay the oviposition of fertilised eggs or avoid offspring
 mortality. Here, we discuss the potential causes of asynchronies in the
 life cycles of parasitoid wasps and their hosts, the availability of
 optimal hosts, and how these factors may affect their populations.
description: To assess the influence of the body length (mm) of the hosts
 (predictor variable) on the sexes of the adult wasps that emerged from the
 pupae (response variable), we used a generalised linear model (GLM) with
 binomial error distribution and logit link function. We tested the
 relationship between the body lengths (mm) of the host (predictor
 variable) and the emerged adult wasp (response variable) using a general
 linear model (LM). We then performed a GLM with a binomial error
 distribution and logit link function to assess how the probability of the
 larva completing its development (response variable) was related to the
 body length (mm) of the host spiders (predictor variable). In this test,
 we only considered the larvae that were in the second half of the second
 instar or in the third instar at the time of collection. In this species,
 larvae spend approximately nine days from egg hatching to pupation, as
 seems to occur in other species with similar size and hosts. Therefore, it
 is probable that these selected larvae have undergone at least 77% of
 their development in the field since they took less than 48 hours in the
 laboratory to pupate. In both previous analyses, we opted to use the
 spiders' body length as the predictor variable since it represents
 the overall size of the hosts. Complementarily, we repeated these analyses
 using carapace width (mm) as the predictor variable (see Supplementary
 Material I). The carapace has a rigid cuticle and does not decrease if the
 larva has consumed a significant amount of haemolymph from the spider.
 Thus, this variable represents the relative sizes among the spiders at the
 time of the wasp attack. To assess whether wasps
 selected host spiders for oviposition according to their body length, we
 categorised all <em>L. volupis</em> individuals (parasitised
 or not) according to their body length distribution. We followed the
 procedure of Gonzaga et al. (2015) and separated the spiders into
 intervals of 1 mm body length: class I (0-1.99), class II (2-2.99), class
 III (3-3.99), class IV (4-4.99), and class V (5-5.99). We performed a
 chi-square test to compare larval incidence among spider-size classes.
 Because none of the male spiders carried parasitoid larvae they were not
 considered potential hosts and were excluded from all analyses.
 Finally, to verify whether the spider population of this study
 really consisted of smaller individuals than the spiders in Gonzaga et al.
 (2015), we obtained the original data and compared the body length of
 spiders between both studies. For this, we conducted a GLM with Gamma
 error distribution and identity link function. In this model, the body
 length of spiders (mm) was the response variable and the study and spider
 parasitism status composed the predictor variable (four levels:
 parasitised and non-parasitised spiders in this study and in Gonzaga et
 al. (2015)). We also performed a contrast analysis to compare each pair of
 levels of the predictor. In this test, we built a contrast matrix
 expecting that non-parasitised spiders were smaller than parasitised
 spiders in their respective study; and expecting that spiders in the
 present study were smaller than those in Gonzaga et al. (2015).
 All analyses were conducted using R version 4.3.1 (R Core Team
 2023). We graphically analysed the normality and homoscedasticity
 assumptions of the model residuals. We additionally evaluated residual
 overdispersion in the GLMs using the ‘DHARMa’ package (Hartig 2022). We
 used the ‘dplyr’ package (Wickham et al. 2022) to organise the data set,
 the ‘lme4’ (Bates et al. 2015) and ‘car’ (Fox and Weisberg 2019) packages
 to perform the statistical models and estimate
 <em>P</em>-values, respectively, the ‘pscl’ (Jackman 2020) and
 ‘rsq’ package (Zhang 2022) to calculate the coefficients of determination
 of the models, the ‘multcomp’ package (Hothorn et al. 2008) to conduct the
 contrast analysis, and the ‘ggplot2’ (Wickham 2016, Wickham et al. 2023),
 ‘ggdist’ (Kay 2024), ‘tidyquant’ (Dancho & Vaughan 2023), and
 ‘patchwork’ (Pedersen 2024) packages to build the graphics.
description: # Data from: Effects of host size on progeny sex and survivorship of
 *Hymenoepimecis pinheirensis*
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p2ngf1w0t](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p2ngf1w0t) ## Description of the data and file structure ``` # Title of Dataset ``` ## **Effects of host size on progeny sex and survivorship of** ***Hymenoepimecis*** ***pinheirensis*** ``` ## Description of the data and file structure ``` The dataset (data.csv and jointdata.csv) provided here refers to the scientific publication: Xavier GM, Gonzaga MO, Castro VC, Silva WD, Valentim AM, Moura RR (2024). Effects of host size on progeny sex and survivorship of *Hymenoepimecis pinheirensis*, *Behavioral Ecology*, arae068, [https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arae068](https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arae068) Use the R codes (provided in a separate file - script - and provided also at the end of this file to correctly read the datasheets in the R environment). Please, note that the R codes also provide more detailed information on the statistical models and the meaning of each variable in the dataset. Note that commas are used as decimal delimiters in tabular data. ### Files and variables #### In the first dataset (data.csv), the meaning of the columns are: photo: photographical identification of each spider (Leucauge volupis) spider_cefalotorax_width: carapace width (mm) of each spider spider_abdomem_width: abdomem width (mm) of each spider spider_total_length: total length (mm) of each spider spider_tibiapatel_length: length (mm) of tibia plus patel of the first leg of each spider observation: additional observations on the parasitoid larvae status wasp_sex: sex of the emerged wasps (male, female) wasp_sex2: sex of the emerged wasps (1=male, 1=female) wasp_wing_length: first wing length (mm) of the emerged wasps wasp_total_length: total lenth (mm) of the emerged wasps spider_parasitised: spiders with or without parasitoids (no, yes) larva_survived: survival of larvae during their development (no, yes) larva_survived2: survival of larvae during their development (0=no, 1=yes) spider_stage: spider stage when parasitised (immature, adult) spider_sex: sex of spiders (female, male) larval_instar: instar of the parasitoid larvae (from 1 to 3) larval_instar_half: intra-instar moment (half) (first, second; or already pupae) of the parasitoid larvae moment: a numeric identification for each stage of the larval_instar_half Empty cells represent situations that these values could not be measured or their measurements are not applicable. The R environment recognizes them as NA values. **In the second dataset (jointdata.csv), the meaning of the columns are:** spider_total_length: total length (mm) of each spider (Leucauge volupis) spider_parasitised: parasitism status of spiders (with 'yes' or without 'no' parasitoid larvae) paper: denotes the article of the data: the current article (new_2023) or previous article (Gonzaga_et_al_2015) group: categories considering the paper and parasitism status of spiders (a=parasitised spiders in the current article, b=non-parasitised spiders in the current article, c=parasitised spiders in Gonzaga et al. 2015, d=non-parasitised spiders in Gonzaga et al. 2015) ## Code/software Please, use the script.R code in an R environment to correctly read the data and to follow the statistical analyses described in the article.