Dispersal strategies of phytophagous insects at a local scale: adaptive potential of aphids in an agricultural environment

Background: The spread of agriculture greatly modified the selective pressures exerted by plants on phytophagous insects, by providing these insects with a high-level resource, structured in time and space. The life history, behavioural and physiological traits of some insect species may have evolved in response to these changes, allowing them to crowd on crops and to become agricultural pests. Dispersal, which is one of these traits, is a key concept in evolutionary biology but has been over-simplified in most theoretical studies. We evaluated the impact of the local-scale dispersal strategy of phytophagous insects on their fitness, using an individual-based model to simulate population dynamics and dispersal between leaves and plants, by walking and flying, of the aphid Aphis gossypii, a major agricultural pest, in a melon field. We compared the optimal values for dispersal parameters in the model with the corresponding observed values in experimental trials. Results: We show that the rates of walking and flying disperser production on leaves were the most important traits determining the fitness criteria, whereas dispersal distance and the clustering of flying dispersers on the target plant had no effect. We further show that the effect of dispersal parameters on aphid fitness depended strongly on plant characteristics. Conclusion: Parameters defining the dispersal strategies of aphids at a local scale are key components of the fitness of these insects and may thus be essential in the adaptation to agricultural environments that are structured in space and time. Moreover, the fact that the effect of dispersal parameters on aphid fitness depends strongly on plant characteristics suggests that traits defining aphid dispersal strategies may be a cornerstone of host-plant specialization.