Investigating the effects of Parasitodiplogaster infection on the life history characteristics of a Northern Mexican Fig Wasp community

The hypothesis that parasites tend to evolve a benign association with their hosts has been repeatedly discredited. Previous theoretical and empirical research has demonstrated that parasites can evolve to become more virulent against their hosts based on population structure related to opportunity for parasitic horizontal transmission. In particular, EA Herre (1993) showed that Panamanian fig wasp species with greater opportunities for horizontal transmission also had more virulent nematode parasites. Our research attempted to examine if this trend was also consistent across populations within the same wasp species. Using the population-fragmented Ficus petiolaris system of Northern Mexico, Pegoscpaus wasps were reared out of fruits from ten populations across three collection trips to determine if Parasitodiplogaster nematodes were more virulent in populations with higher opportunities for horizontal transmission. As a result of these collections, we found a weak trend that was consistent with our hypothesis. Our results show that the complexity of the parasite-host interaction present within the fig wasp-nematode association requires careful analysis of the life history across both organisms as well as the community at large. In particular, future work can examine the effects of parasitic superinfection on host fitness as well as parasite-host specificity within this community.