Neotrop Entomol (2015) 44:328–337 DOI 10.1007/s13744-015-0294-5 ECOLOGY, BEHAVIOR AND BIONOMICS Female Preference and Offspring Performance in the Seed Beetle Gibbobruchus bergamini Manfio & Ribeiro-Costa (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae): A Multi-Scale Comparison LL BERGAMINI,MALMEIDA-NETO Depto de Ecologia, Univ Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, GO, Brasil Keywords Abstract Bruchinae, herbivory, resource aggregation, The search for and choice of oviposition sites are a key step in the life cycle seed predation, scale dependence of herbivorous insects. Theory predicts that natural selection should favor Correspondence the discrimination ability of female insects to select between high- and LL Bergamini, Depto de Ecologia, Univ low-quality oviposition sites. However, correlation between female pref- Federal de Goiás, 74001-970 Goiânia, GO, Brasil;
[email protected] erence and offspring performance is apparently lacking or even negative in some herbivore-plant systems. A possible explanation for this seeming Edited by Angelo Pallini – UFV failure is that most studies have focused on a single factor and spatial Received 8 August 2014 and accepted 20 scale. Here, we investigated the preference-performance relationship in March 2015 the seed beetle Gibbobruchus bergamini Manfio & Ribeiro-Costa (Coleop- Published online: 23 April 2015 tera: Chrysomelidae). We took into account several potential factors af- fecting oviposition choices and larval survivorship through a multi-level * Sociedade Entomológica do Brasil 2015 approach. Hierarchical analysis that controlled for the non-independence of observations demonstrated that oviposition site choices were not re- lated to the factors that most influenced larval survivorship. The apparent effects of other pod-feeding herbivores were greater at the plant and branch scales while at the pod level the most important factors were plant-related variables.