Abstract | Parasitoids derive all their resources for development from a single host individual and it is this that makes them a particularly ideal model for studying the evolution of predator life histories. In this talk we will explore the evolution of parasitoid development time and the timing and efficiency of attack. In particular, we explore the conditions that might select for rapid parasitoid development at the expense of reduced parasitoid growth and attack efficiency. Host parasitoid systems often exhibit non-equilibrium population dynamics (cycles or chaos) and such variability on population abundance can change the evolutionary behaviour and promote evolutionary branching. Thus using adaptive dynamics we consider parasitoid evolution within the framework of a modified Nicholson-Bailey model and explore the conditions under which parasitoid variation may evolve. |