DOI: 10.5285/52b6b432-8f69-4b08-8a47-04e40f656f55
title: Individual life history data from a resource degradation and temperature variation life history experiment in the Plodia-Venturia host-parasitoid interaction

description: This dataset contains information on life history traits of the host Plodia interpunctella (Pyralidae; Hübner) and the parasitoid wasp Venturia canescens (Ichneumonidae; Gravenhorst).

The data was collected from a single generation life history experiment investigating the combined effects of daily stochastic temperature fluctuations and resource degradation on individual life history in the Plodia-Venturia host-parasitoid trophic interaction. The Plodia interpunctella data include egg viability, egg status, hatching date, adult emergence date, date of death, sex, egg length in mm, and adult leg (mid-femur) length in mm. The Venturia canescens data include adult emergence date, adult emergence outcome (i.e., the species that emerged from parasitized host larvae), date of death and adult leg (hind-tibia) length in mm. The temperature time series data include the date and daily temperature in the fluctuating temperatures treatment.
description: The unparasitized and parasitized hosts life history experiment used hosts from laboratory stock cultures and parasitoids from a laboratory parthenogenetic thelytokous (asexual) strain, which were kept on non-degraded host resource at constant 28°C in incubators with a 16:8h light cycle. Daily temperature variation and host resource degradation (also referred as ‘diet’ in datasets) were manipulated in a full factorial design. Two temperature treatments in each resource degradation treatment were compared. Both temperature treatments were characterized by a mean temperature of 26°C, which did not vary in the constant (‘CST’) treatment and varied randomly between 22.3 and 30.2°C every 24h in the variable (‘VAR’) treatment (26°C ± 1.5°C SD, AR(1) = 0.02, 95% CI [-0.10, 0.14].

A gradient of resource degradation was created from none to high by replacing 0, 25, 50 and 75 % of wheat germ in the host’s diet with methyl cellulose, an indigestible bulking agent with no nutritional value. The life history experiment started on day 5 of the temperature time series and lasted for 74 days. 

There were 40 unparasitized and 25 parasitized host larvae in each temperature by resource degradation treatment. Each host egg in the unparasitized hosts assay was kept individually (i.e., no competition for resources) under its assigned temperature treatment with 0.3 g of its assigned diet (ad libitum) and monitored daily until death for life history and morphological traits. Host eggs in the parasitized hosts assay were kept in 8 groups of 100 eggs under their assigned temperature treatment with 30.0 g of their assigned resource until they were parasitized. Parasitism took place over a period of three days from age 20 to 22 days [8-9 larva per treatment parasitized on each day as fourth or fifth instars, the most suitable hosts for Venturia’s development]. Parasitized larvae were then kept individually under their assigned temperature treatment with 0.3 g of their assigned resource and monitored daily until the death of the host, the parasitoid or both. More details of the material and methods can be found in the Supplementary information.