Many butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) lay their eggs directly on their caterpillar's food plants and the caterpillars must complete their development there. What effect does the choice of food plant by the adult female have on the growth, development, and survival of her caterpillars and, therefore, on her expected fitness? The investigators' goal is to answer this question for the giant wild silk moth Rothschildia lebeau (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) in the tropical dry forest of the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG), in northwestern Costa Rica. The investigators will follow cohorts of caterpillars from hatching to adulthood. The caterpillars will be placed experimentally on individual food plants in the forest in order to measure caterpillar growth, development, and survival on different species of food plants under natural conditions. These experiments will be repeated in different habitats, seasons, and years. This study will contribute to our basic knowledge about the natural range of variation in food plant "quality" experienced by herbivorous insects in nature and, in turn, it will reveal the consequences to the caterpillar of eating distinct species.
Broader Impacts: For nearly 25 years, the ACG has been the site of an intensive biodiversity inventory of adult moths and butterflies and their caterpillars. This inventory has produced a wealth of natural history and taxonomic information, which presents opportunities for countless ecological studies that address core questions in the field of plant-insect research. This is one such study. As the ACG's biodiversity projects increase the value of this and other ecological studies, these same ecological studies reciprocate by increasing the value of the biodiversity projects and the conserved wildland in which they occur.
