Faculty Sponsor
Becky Hansis-O’Neill
Final Abstract for URS Program
The availability of resources plays an important role in the survival and fitness of all organisms, one's ability to find and utilize resources can impact interactions between them and their environments. The interaction between organisms for resources can lead to interspecific competition, amongst two different species, or intraspecific competition, amongst the same species. In an experiment to test for competitive interactions between the parasitoid wasp species of N. vitripennis and M. digitata that utilize a fresh fly papua as their host to aid in the reproduction of their offspring. Over a period of time testing for conditions of interspecific and intraspecific competition by measuring their mean offspring produced we set up five vials to isolate each respective competition interaction. In vials one and two used as a control for the experiment, one wasp from one wasp species was placed inside one vial with its own host. For vials two and three, two wasps from one wasp species were placed inside one vial with a host to test for intraspecific competition interactions. To test for interspecific competition interactions one wasp from each species' was placed inside vial five with a host. From the analysis of our results through the excel software we determined that the two species while in competition have a predicted outcome of unstable coexistence. Further, both wasp species mean offspring produced were significantly impacted by interspecific competition. Overall the impact of competition interactions among both species impacts their overall fitness which sets up a model to further test how competition influences an organism's availability and success with utilizing resources in their environments.
Presentation Type
Visual Presentation
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
April 2023