Fig 1.
Growth trajectory of an insect larva, with an indication of descriptive statistics recorded in the present study.
The grey bars represent the days in the beginning of the last instar, for which the measures of differential of growth rate were calculated. The presentation on the growth trajectory is schematic and bears no quantitative correspondence with that of Ematurga atomaria which has 5 larval instars.
Table 1.
Growth parameters of the last (5th) larval instar (mean values±SE) of Ematurga atomaria, a lepidopteran with sexual dimorphism in pupal masses.
Fig 2.
Size-dependence (results of mixed ANOVAs with sex and food plant as fixed factors and brood as a random factor) of three different measures of differential growth rates (absolute–mg·day-1; relative–day-1; allometric–mg1/3·day-1; see text) in female (solid circles) and male (empty squares) Ematurga atomaria larvae.
Vertical axes represent growth rates calculated for the 2nd (left panels) and 3rd (right panels) days of larval growth in the final larval instar and horizontal axes represent masses (mg) recorded one day before the growth rate measurements. This way we avoided the situation that the two variables being correlated contain common elements, a situation known to cause statistical artefacts [49]. Regression lines and equations in bold represent females.
Fig 3.
Average larval masses of the two sexes of Ematurga atomaria, presented from the beginning of the 5th instar until the median duration of the instar (11 days in females and 10 days in males).
Average pupal mass denotes average pupal mass of females and males, recorded a week after pupation.
Table 2.
The results of mixed ANOVAs for three different measures of differential growth rate of the last instar larvae of Ematurga atomaria.