Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 2017, 1–9 doi: 10.1093/aesa/sax048 Ecology and Population Biology Research article Tachinid Fly (Diptera: Tachinidae) Parasitoids of Danaus plexippus (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) Karen Oberhauser,1,2 Dane Elmquist,3 Juan Manuel Perilla-Lopez, 4 Ilse Gebhard,5 Laura Lukens,1 and John Stireman4 1Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108 (
[email protected];
[email protected]), 2Corresponding author, e-mail:
[email protected], 3USDA-ARS, Yakima, WA 98902 (
[email protected]. gov), 4Department of Biological Sciences, Wright State University, Dayton, OH 45435 (
[email protected]; john.stireman@ wright.edu), and 56450 N. 2nd St. Kalamazoo, MI 49009 (
[email protected]) Subject Editor: Ann Fraser Received 31 January 2017; Editorial decision 15 May 2017 Abstract Extensive rearing of monarch larvae (Danaus plexippus L.) through the citizen science Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (MLMP) revealed that monarchs’ primary parasitoids are flies in the family Tachinidae and that these parasitoids result in appreciable larval mortality. We document the tachinid community that attacks monarchs in the United States, evaluate their relative frequency, and examine variation in their specificity, ovi- position strategy, and use of host stages. Based on results of rearing >20,000 monarchs by MLMP volunteers, overall parasitism by tachinids across life stages was 9.8% (17% for monarchs collected as fifth instars). We identified the flies that emerged from 466 monarch hosts, and found seven Tachinidae species. In decreasing order of frequency, these included Lespesia archippivora (Riley), Hyphantrophaga virilis (Aldrich & Webber), Compsilura concinnata (Meigen), Leschenaultia n.