In most animals, males are assumed to have access to an unlimited supply of sperm, while females produce few eggs that are large and costly to produce. In parasitoids, there is a paradigm to the effect that males are polyandrous, inseminate as many females as possible and express no optimization in their behaviours. In reality, sperm production incurs non-trivial costs. Because sperm are transferred in ejaculates and that their cost is greater than that of individual sperm, males can gain by carefully allocating their ejaculates. In this thesis I have investigated different aspects of males' reproductive strategies, mainly sperm and time allocation, in the egg parasitoid Trichogramma turkestanica Meyer (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae). / In T. turkestanica, mating mainly occur on the emergence patch. However, results show that mating opportunities are not distributed equally among males and 2.9% of successful males are sperm-depleted when they disperse from the emergence patch. Nevertheless, 97.1% of males disperse non sperm-depleted, suggesting off-patch mating potential. Male T. turkestanica have thus an insemination capacity higher than necessary to inseminate the females present on the emergence patch, a pattern that seems to be common among parasitic wasps. / On the emergence patch, both virgin and mated females can be encountered. Males are able to discriminate between those mates and prefer virgin ones. This preference is stronger for energy- and time-limited males. / Sperm competition risks and/or intensity are important for males that decrease their sperm investment when the number of rivals increases. Such response is optimal when the benefits from investing more sperm become lower than the costs of a low paternity assurance under intense sperm competition. / Finally, male T. turkestanica express behaviours enabling them to optimize their patch time exploitation. Depending on their evaluation of the patch quality, males modify their patch residence time. / This thesis shows that time- and sperm-limited male T. turkestanica are not simply maximizing the number of females inseminated, but rather maximize their lifetime fitness by optimizing sperm and patch time allocation.

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Haplodiploid Hymenoptera females control the sex of their progeny, and their sex allocation is influenced by several factors. The impact of intra- and interspecific competition and of inbreeding and outbreeding on sex allocation has been studied in some species of the egg parasitoid Trichogramma. The pre-mating dispersion has also been studied. Impact of competition on sex allocation was observed for Trichogramma minutum Riley and Trichogramma pintoi Voegele. These species were chosen because of the ease with which than can be distinguish. Results show that females of both species lay more males under intraspecific competition than alone, following the Local Mate Competition theory, while only T. pintoi modifies its sex ratio under interspecific competition. Multiparasitism and natural habitat could explain this shift in the sex ratio. Trichogramma minutum, T. pintoi and Trichogramma evanescens Westwood pre-mating dispersion show that most matings occur at the emergence site. However, the three species have a potential for off-patch mating, allowing genetic exchange between sub-populations. These three species were chosen because they are classified in different groups in the genus. Finally, T. evanescens did not modify its sex ratio following inbreeding or outbreeding. The incapacity to discriminate between kin and non-kin, insufficient genetic distance in outbreeding, or the population structure could explain these results.

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