Abstract:The development, sex ratio, emergence rate, and body size of the egg parasitoid Trichogramma dendrolimi Matsumura (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae), reared on the eggs of Adoxophyes honmai and Homona magnanima, were investigated in the laboratory at five constant temperatures (16, 20, 24, 28, and 32°C). Although the developmental rate of T. dendrolimi reared on both hosts increased significantly with increasing temperature, the developmental rate of T. dendrolimi reared on the eggs of H. magnanima increased significantly with increasing temperature more rapidly than those reared on the eggs of A. honmai. The developmental zero and total effective temperatures for females and males reared on the eggs of A. honmai were 11.7°C and 120.5 degree-days and 11.5°C and 119.0 degree-days, respectively. The developmental zero and total effective temperatures for females and males reared on the eggs of H. magnanima were 11.7°C and 114.9 degree-days and 11.7°C and 116.3 degree-days, respectively. The sex ratios (female/total) of adults emerging from the eggs of A. honmai and H. magnanima were 0.76-0.89 and 0.71-0.77, respectively. The sex ratio of adults emerging from the eggs of A. honmai was significantly higher than that of adults emerging from the eggs of H. magnanima. The percentage adult emergence rates of T. dendrolimi [{numbers of emerged adults/(numbers of emerged adultsϩnumbers of dead individuals inside eggshells)}ϫ100] reared on the eggs of A. honmai and H. magnanima were 23.5-73.4% and 41.8-85.0%, respectively. The adult emergence rates of T. dendrolimi reared on both hosts decreased significantly at an accelerating rate with increasing temperature. The head widths of female and male adults emerging from the eggs of A. honmai were 0.172-0.186 mm and 0.168-0.188 mm, respectively, whereas those of female and male adults emerging from the eggs of H. magnanima were 0.202-0.216 mm and 0.195-0.212 mm, respectively. The head widths of T. dendrolimi reared on the eggs of A. honmai increased significantly with increasing temperature. In contrast, the head widths of T. dendrolimi reared on the eggs of H. magnanima decreased significantly at an accelerating rate with increasing temperature.

Abstract:The parasitoid Encarsia smithi comprises two phylogenetic groups. Type I is a strain that was introduced from China in 1925 to control the orange spiny whitefly, Aleurocanthus spiniferus, in Japanese citrus orchards. The other strain, type II, was accidentally introduced and has recently been found in tea fields infested with the tea spiny whitefly, A. camelliae. In this report, we describe our developed rearing method for successive generations of the two strains using A. spiniferus-infested citrus seedlings. In rearing experiments, we found these strains to have different ecological characteristics in terms of number of offspring and emergence pattern.

Abstract:We compared the efficiency of the reported primer pair and another version that we redesigned for discriminating tea spiny whitefly, Aleurocanthus camelliae Kanmiya and Kasai, an invasive tea pest in Japan, from another species, A. spiniferus Quaintance , caught on yellow sticky traps in two tea fields in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The reported primer pair enabled us to identify only 5.0-6.7% of individuals captured, whereas we were able to identify 73.3-75.0% of the captured individuals using the redesigned primer pair. These results suggest that the redesigned primer pair is more effective for monitoring the occurrence of A. camelliae in Japanese tea fields.