Date of Award

Spring 4-30-2026

Document Type

Honors Project

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Biological Sciences

Department Chair or Program Director

Baker, Dianne

First Advisor

Cirino, Lauren

Second Advisor

Dolby, Andrew

Third Advisor

Tomba, Abbie

Major or Concentration

Biology

Abstract

Animals must partition resources into different life history traits resulting in tradeoffs because resources are finite. A tradeoff is the allocation of resources to one trait over another. Theory states that energy is allocated in a hierarchical fashion. For example, somatic maintenance should be a higher priority than reproduction, resulting in more resources being allocated to somatic maintenance compared to reproductive traits. The metabolic investment hypothesis states that energy must follow a hierarchical order prioritizing somatic maintenance over reproduction. Another hypothesis for energy allocation is the terminal investment hypothesis. This hypothesis states that energy will be allocated to reproduction over survival to increase overall fitness, One example of a somatic maintenance trait is an immune response which supports upkeep of the body. Our goal is to examine how resources are partitioned throughout the body using leaf-footed cactus bugs which can trade off resources between reproductive traits. We placed late-stage juveniles into four treatments: wounding only, autotomy and wounding, wounding only, and control. We used testes size as a metric to determine reproductive fitness and wounding as a proxy for immune system activation. We found that treatment did not influence body size. Additionally, wounding and the interaction between wounding and autotomy did not influence testes mass. However, autotomy alone caused a significant increase in testes mass, indicating that a pre-post copulatory reproductive tradeoff had occurred. Because wounding did not cause in change in testes mass, this suggests that male juveniles are able to tolerate small wounds and their future reproductive capacities will not be altered.

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