Effects of Delayed Mating on Reproductive Performance of Plodia Interpunctella (Hubner)
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Journal of Stored Products Research 39 (2003) 53–63 Effects of delayed mating on reproductive performance of Plodia interpunctella (Hubner). (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) Fangneng Huang, Bhadriraju Subramanyam* Department of Grain Science and Industry, Kansas State University, 201 Shellenberger Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506-2201, USA Accepted 8 January 2002 Abstract Virgin male and female Indianmeal moths, Plodia interpunctella (Hubner),. were mated soon after emergence or delayed from mating for 1–5 d, to determine the effect of age at mating on the number of spermatophores transferred by males to females, number of eggs laid (fecundity), egg viability, and adult longevity. When male and female moths were mated without delay, all females mated successfully. On average, each mated female had 2.2 spermatophores and laid 161 eggs. About 99% of the eggs laid were viable. Fecundity and egg viability were significantly and positively correlated with the number of spermatophores/female. For each day that mating of virgin male or female P. interpunctella was delayed, fecundity decreased by about 25 eggs. Egg viability decreased by 22%/d only when females were delayed from mating. Males delayed from mating for 5 d were unable to inseminate females. However, about 23% of females had one spermatophore when females or both males and females were delayed from mating for 5 d. On average, 22–39 non-viable eggs were laid by a female in treatments where male or female moths were delayed from mating for 5 d. Similarly, unmated (virgin) females laid 33 non-viable eggs. These results suggest that methods that can delay and disrupt mating may be effective behavioral strategies for managing this important pest of stored commodities and processed foods. r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Indianmeal moth; Mating delay; Egg production; Egg viability 1. Introduction Delaying mating has been shown to have a significant effect on the number of spermatophores transferred by males to females, number of eggs laid (fecundity), and egg viability in insect pests belonging to several families of Lepidoptera (Kehat and Gordon, 1977; Ellis and Steele, 1982; *Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-785-532-4092; fax: +1-785-532-7010. E-mail address: [email protected] (B. Subramanyam). 0022-474X/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 0 2 2 - 4 7 4 X ( 0 2 ) 00018-8 54 F. Huang, B. Subramanyam / Journal of Stored Products Research 39 (2003) 53–63 Henneberry and Clayton, 1985; Lingren et al., 1988; Wakamura, 1990; Unnithan and Payne, 1991; Walker, 1991; Proshold, 1996; Knight, 1997; Spurgeon et al., 1997; Fadamiro and Baker, 1999). The effects of delayed mating on reproductive performance of stored-product moths have not been extensively investigated. To our knowledge, there is only one paper (Mbata, 1985) that briefly described the effects of delaying female mating on oviposition in the Indianmeal moth, Plodia interpunctella (Hubner),. an important pest of raw and processed cereals worldwide (Sinha and Watters, 1985). In the present investigation, we examined in detail the effect of male, female, and both male and female age at mating on the number of spermatophores transferred to females, fecundity, egg viability, and adult longevity. This information will be useful in developing mating disruption strategies using pheromones (Jones, 1988a, b; Knight, 1997) and ultrasound (Acharya and McNeil, 1998) for suppressing P. interpunctella populations. 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Insects Cultures of P. interpunctella were reared on a poultry-mash diet (Subramanyam and Cutkomp, 1987) at 281C, 65% r.h., and 14 h light:10 h dark cycle. The diet (200 g) in 0.95-l glass jars was seeded with approximately 200 eggs. Corrugated paper spools, placed above the diet in each jar, served as pupation sites for wandering larvae. Pupae collected from spools were sexed using characters described by Butt and Cantu (1962). Male and female pupae were placed in separate 0.95-l jars. Jars were checked twice daily, and moths (0–12-h-old) that emerged were used in experiments. 2.2. Mating treatments There were a total of 18 mating treatments (see Table 1). Newly emerged virgin females were paired with newly emerged virgin males or with 1–5-d-old virgin males (treatments 1–6). Newly emerged virgin males were paired with 1–5-d-old virgin females (treatments 7–11), and 1–5-d-old virgin females were mated with virgin males of the same age (treatments 12–16). In each of these treatments, five females were paired with five males. In two of the treatments, five newly emerged virgin females were not paired with males (treatment 17), and five newly emerged virgin males were not paired with females (treatment 18). Each treatment was replicated 3–6 times by introducing the appropriate number of moths in 0.95-l glass jars. After moth introduction, jars were covered with wire mesh screens (1.58 mm2 holes) fitted to metal lids. The jars were inverted over 9-cm diameter glass Petri dishes to collect the eggs that dropped through the mesh. All jars were held in the same growth chamber used for rearing the insects. Petri dishes and jars were checked daily between 8:00 a.m. and12:00 noon local time, to count the number of eggs laid and number of dead moths. Jars were checked until all adults were dead. Eggs collected daily were placed in 25 mm diameter  10 mm high plastic Petri dishes. These dishes were placed above 10 g of P. interpunctella rearing diet held in 0.47-l glass jars, so that F. Huang, B. Subramanyam / Journal of Stored Products Research 39 (2003) 53–63 55 Table 1 Effects of delayed mating by male, female, or both male and female Plodia interpunctella on preoviposition period and spermatophore transfer Treatment Treatment Preoviposition No. females No. spermatophores/ Percentage of females with 0–4 no. period (d) dissected female (Mean7SE)a spermatophores/female Female Male (Mean7SE)a age (d) age (d) 0 1234 1b 0 0 0.6770.21b 16 2.2470.12a 0.0 6.3 62.5 31.3 0.0 2c 0 1 1.0070.26b 29 1.8370.19ab 0.0 34.5 44.8 20.7 0.0 3c 0 2 0.3370.21b 30 1.5770.29bc 0.0 60.0 26.7 10.0 3.3 4b 0 3 0.5070.29b 20 0.8570.05ef 15.0 85.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 5d 0 4 1.0070.00b 24 0.6270.17efg 37.5 62.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 6c 0 5 2.6770.42a 30 0.0070.00i 100.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 7c 1 0 1.5070.22 30 1.7370.15bc 0.0 46.7 36.7 16.7 0.0 8c 2 0 2.1770.17 29 1.4070.25cd 3.4 69.0 13.8 10.3 3.4 9c 3 0 3.0070.00 30 1.0370.06de 6.7 86.7 6.7 0.0 0.0 10c 4 0 4.0070.00 29 0.5270.07fgh 55.2 34.5 10.3 0.0 0.0 11c 5 0 5.0070.00 30 0.2070.07hi 76.7 23.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 12e 1 1 1.0070.00 15 1.8070.12abc 0.0 33.3 53.3 13.3 0.0 13e 2 2 2.0070.00 15 1.0770.07de 0.0 93.3 6.7 0.0 0.0 14d 3 3 3.0070.00 21 0.8570.05ef 14.3 85.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 15c 4 4 4.0070.00 30 0.3370.07ghi 66.7 33.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 16c 5 5 5.0070.00 30 0.0370.03i 76.7 23.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 17c female 2.1770.54a a Means in a single column followed by different letters are significantly different (Po0:05; least squares means test). b n ¼ 4 replications. c n ¼ 6 replications. d n ¼ 5 replications. e n ¼ 3 replications. larvae hatching from eggs could infest the diet. These jars were held at the same environmental conditions mentioned above. After 1 week, dishes were checked for eggs that failed to hatch. Egg viability in each dish was determined from the number of eggs out of the total that hatched. Dead female moths were collected and preserved in vials containing 100% ethanol. Females were dissected under the stereomicroscope to determine the number of spermatophores in the bursa copulatrix (Lum, 1979). 2.3. Data analysis A completely random design was used for the experiments. Only the percentage of egg viability data were transformed to angular values (Zar, 1984) before analysis to stabilize variances across the treatments. Data on the number of spermatophores transferred to females, preoviposition period, number of eggs laid, egg viability, or adult (male or female) longevity were subjected to one-way analysis of variance using the PROC GLM procedure (SAS Institute, 1990), to determine treatment differences. Treatment means were separated using the least squares means test at the 56 F. Huang, B. Subramanyam / Journal of Stored Products Research 39 (2003) 53–63 a ¼ 0:05 level (SAS Institute, 1990). For each treatment, the frequency distribution of females with 0–4 spermatophores was expressed as a percentage of the total females dissected. Linear regressions (SAS Institute, 1990) were used to determine the relationshipbetween mating delay (in days) and each of the biological responses observed, and between any two biological responses. 3. Results 3.1. Effects of delayed mating on preoviposition period Preoviposition data in treatments where female mating was delayed were not subjected to statistical analysis, because the preoviposition period was confounded with the number of days females were delayed.