The morphological allometry of four closely related and coexisting insect species reveals adaptation to the mean and variability of the resource size.

ABSTRACT

The size of organisms may result from various, sometimes antagonistic forces operating on distinct traits, within an evolutionary framework that may also be constraining. Morphological allometry, referring to the way trait size scales with body size, has been shown to reflect ecological adaptation to the mean size of the resource exploited. We examined the allometric relationships between rostrum and body size among four insect (Curculio spp.) specialists of oak acorns. In all four species, weevil females drill a hole with their rostrum prior depositing one or a few eggs inside the seed. The four weevil species, that coexist on the same individual trees, displayed partitioned egg-laying periods in the year, thereby encountering acorns of different size and maturation stage. We found marked differences in the allometric slope among females species laying eggs late in the season had a steeper slope, leading to increasingly longer rostrum relative to body length, along with the mean size of the growing acorns. Females of the smallest species had the longest oviposition period and also had the steepest slope, which provided them with the most variable rostrum length, thereby matching the variable size of the resource through time. Our work highlights the need to consider not only the average size but also the degree of variability in resource size to understand the adaptive value of allometric relationships.