Genetic variation in compensatory feeding for dietary dilution in a generalist caterpillar

Increasing the rate of food consumption is a common adaptive strategy that allows herbivores to compensate for declines in nutrient concentrations in plant tissues. Herbivores that are better able to compensate for dietary dilution may have selective advantages under nutritionally poor conditions. In order for compensatory feeding to respond to selection, there must be standing heritable variation for this trait. However, empirical data substantiating the adaptive significance and genetic variability of compensatory feeding are rare. By employing a full-sib, split-brood design, this study presents quantitative genetic analyses on the nutrient consumption rates of the generalist caterpillar, Spodoptera exigua, raised on semi-synthetic diets differing in nutrient concentrations. When encountering a diluted diet, caterpillars exhibited a compensatory increase in food consumption rate, but the extent of this increase was not sufficient to fully compensate for dietary dilution. A significant gene-environment interaction for consumption rate indicated that the capacity of caterpillars to compensate for dietary dilution varied across genotypes. The broad-sense heritability of compensatory feeding was 0.51. Caterpillar genotypes with a higher compensatory capacity suffered lower performance losses on the diluted diet than did those with a lower capacity. This study has implications for understanding how herbivores can evolutionarily respond to nutritional challenges.