Catching Ariadne by her thread: how a parasitoid exploits the herbivore's marking trails to locate its host

Chemical signals that can be associated with the presence of a host insect often work as arrestants in close range host location by parasitoids, leading to longer searching times on patches where such signals are present. Our current view of parasitoid host location is that by prolonging the search times in patches, randomly searching parasitoids enhance their chance of detecting host insects. However, prolonged search times are not necessarily the only modification in parasitoid behaviour. In this study, we examine the exploitation of host-fruit marking pheromone of rose-hip flies, Rhagoletis basiolaOsten-Sacken (Diptera: Tephritidae) by the specialized egg-larval parasitoid Halticoptera rosae Burks (Hymenoptera: Pteromalidae). We provide evidence that the instantaneous probability that a host egg will be located by a searching parasitoid wasp differs markedly between pheromone-marked and unmarked fruits. The arresting response to the marking pheromone, i.e., the prolonged time a wasp is willing to search on marked fruits, can only account for a small fraction of the difference in successful host location on marked and unmarked fruits. We further demonstrate that the time wasps require to locate the host egg is independent of the size of the rose-hip harbouring the fly egg, and thus is independent of the area the wasp potentially has to search. A comparison of our findings with results of different search algorithms for parasitoid wasps suggests that wasps use the fly's pheromone marking trail as a guide way to the fly's oviposition site and thus the host egg.