DOI: 10.5061/dryad.brv15dvmq
title: Lipid provisioning in the eggs of an extreme dietary generalist

description: Parents can provide care to their offspring to increase their offspring’s
 chance of survival. There are various types of parental care across insect
 taxa, one of which is maternal investment. Lipids, the most energy-dense
 of macronutrients, are considered a good estimate of maternal investment
 in insects. However, it is not clear how different environments, such as
 host plants, can impact provisioning, especially for dietary generalists
 that feed on an array of plant species with varying quality. Using an
 extreme dietary generalist, fall webworm (FW, Hyphantria cunea), we
 investigated if females provision different amounts of lipids into their
 eggs depending on the diet they fed upon as larvae. We measured the lipid
 content of FW egg clusters from parents reared on seven host plant species
 of varying quality. We found that parental host plants influenced egg
 provisioning, such that provisioning depends on host plant but also
 increases most for parents reared on low-quality diets. Additionally, we
 found that female parents with heavier pupal mass produced egg clusters
 with greater lipids per egg. Our results provide evidence that egg
 provisioning can depend on the parental environment and suggest that the
 use of low-quality host plants by generalist herbivores may be partially
 overcome via maternal investment.
description: # Lipid provisioning in the eggs of an extreme dietary generalist Dataset
 DOI: [10.5061/dryad.brv15dvmq](10.5061/dryad.brv15dvmq) ## Description of
 the data and file structure Here we test if fall webworm webworm
 (*Hyphantria cunea*; hereafter FW) parents provision different amounts of
 lipids in their egg clusters depending on their larval diet or the the
 condition of the female, in the form of pupal mass. Each replicate
 represents a FW egg cluster for which we measured lipid content. ### Files
 and variables #### File: Sellers_Lipids.xlsx
 **Description:** Sellers_Lipids.xlsx is the complete data file of all egg
 clusters we sampled ##### Variables * egg_clust : egg cluster individual
 ID number * 23_log : ID for female pupal mass for females reared the
 summer of 2023 some replicates have "NA" for 23_log because the
 associated egg cluster's female parent was not weighed the summer of
 2023 * mat_pm : weight of maternal/female pupal mass (mg) some replicates
 have "NA" for mat_pm because they do not have an associated
 maternal pupal mass * p_diet : parental diet treatment, either AP, AL, CA,
 CC, BW, BL, or NL AP = domestic apple, *Malus domestica*; AL = thinleaf
 alder, *Alnus tenuifolia*; CA = crab apple, *Malus sylvestris*; CC =
 chokecherry, *Prunus virginiana*; BW = willow, *Salix spp.,* likely *Salix
 fragilis*; BL = broadleaf cottonwood, *Populus deltoides*; NL = narrowleaf
 cottonwood, *Populus angustifolia* * lay_date : date eggs were laid  *
 w_date : date eggs were weighed * n_eggs : number of eggs in the egg
 cluster * initial_m : initial mass of egg cluster before drying (mg) *
 dry_m : dry mass of egg cluster after 3 days in drying oven (mg) * final_m
 : final mass of egg cluster after removing lipids (mg) * lipid_mass : mass
 of lipids in egg cluster, calculated by subtracting final mass from dry
 mass (mg) * avg_inmegg : mean initial mass per egg in the cluster (mg) *
 avg_lipmegg : mean lipid mass per egg in the cluster (mg/egg) * egg_age :
 age of eggs when entered into experiment, or weigh data minus lay date
 (days) ## Code/software We used R Studio environment to analyze our data,
 version R.4.4.3. We used the following packages: tidyverse, stats,
 ggplot2, emmeans, dplyr For access to script, please contact the
 corresponding author ## Access information NA