The Study On The Learning Behavior And Training With Turpentine By The Parasitoid Sclerderma Sichuanensis Xiao (Hymenoptera: Bethylidae)

The paper studies the influence of experience on the behavior of foraging by the parasitoid Sclerderma sichuanensis Xiao(Hymenoptera : Bethylidae) fed on the fictitious host Tenebrio molitor L. The result shows that the egg-laying prophase of the female with experience of parasite is shorter than that without experience. The experience can shorten the time for the female to find the hosts, making the female easily accept the hosts, and accelerate the development of the ovum in the ovary. So, the females with the experience can find and control the hosts more efficiently than that without the experience.The method to use the finger-tube as the vector to volatilize turpentine in the can bottle is better than that to use the filter paper as the vector or directly dropping of turpentine in the bottle, because it can let out volatiles into the bottle softly and persistently. So using the finger-tube as the vector is the best way to release the turpentine into the microhabitats .Using the Y-tube olfactometor to study the learning behavior of S. sichuanensis , the result shows that the female parasitoids in different microhabitats from pine needles, pine barks, turpentine, fir barks respectively, respond positively to corresponding volatiles when they are offered with a bi-directional choice between blank(CK) and volatiles previously experienced at emergence and the early stage of adult, but the females responds similarly to fir leaves when they come from the fir leaves microhabitats. There is no increasing preference to volatiles in the Y-tube olfactometor when the females are provided with additional hosts. Associative learning occurrs when the parasitoids are fed on the hosts or honey and smell the odors from branches of pine or fir at the same time. There are no significant difference observed between the females with 8 d experience and those with 4 d experienceIt is discovered that there is no different preference to turpentine from the first generation(F₁) parasitoid to the fourth generation(F₄) experienced with turpentine at emergence and the early stage of adult, and x² test indicates that the experiencedparasitoids have the same preference as the inexperienced parasitoid to turpentine if they are not exposed to turpentine volatiles at that time. In the environment with turpentine volatiles, the F4 generation with exposure to the turpentine volatiles at emergence and the early stage of adult attacks more to the gauzes and the hosts than the F4.] generation and the female without experience.