Can parasitized diamondback moth larvae avoid ant attacks?

Although koinobiont parasitoids exploit their hosts without killing them,
consuming the body tissues of hosts that avoid predation via high motility
should increase the risk of the parasitoids being preyed upon along with
their hosts. Cotesia vestalis (Haliday) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae)
is a koinobiont parasitoid of the diamondback moth Plutella xylostella
(L.) (DBM). Although DBM larvae exhibit predation avoidance behaviors
based on their high locomotor ability, we hypothesized that DBM larvae
parasitized by C. vestalis might not be able to maintain this ability and,
hence, are exposed to higher predation pressure than unparasitized larvae.
We compared locomotor and predation avoidance abilities of parasitized and
unparasitized DBM larvae. Compared to unparasitized DBM larvae,
parasitized DBM larvae had lower wriggling ability to mechanical stimuli
and were more likely to be preyed upon by the black wood
ant Formica japonica (Motschoulsky) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in
situations where they had to avoid predation by wriggling. In contrast,
hanging ability did not differ between parasitized and unparasitized DBM
larvae, nor in predation avoidance ability in situations where they had to
avoid F. japonica predation by hanging. The results demonstrate
that parasitism by C. vestalis reduces the wriggling ability of
DBM larvae, which consequently exposes the parasitoid to higher intraguild
predation risk under some conditions. This finding also suggests that the
conventional research methods used to reveal the mortality factors of DBM
larvae may have underestimated parasitism, because they did not take into
account parasitized DBM larvae missing due to predation. It seemed that
host species with vigorous defensive behaviors are likely to have such
behaviors impaired when parasitized, while whether parasitized hosts are
actually more vulnerable to predation depends on the specific defensive
strategies used by the hosts.