The entomology and pathology teams at the RHS have already had 1,200 inquiries about box tree caterpillars in the last year and are anticipating damage to be high in August - as the current generation of caterpillars will by now be approaching
pupation and, as they are larger, their feeding damage will be more noticeable.
Food consumed and weight gain by individual larvae were determined every 24 h during the first three days and subsequently every 12 h until death or
pupation using a PW 214 Analytical Balance (USA) with a readability range of 0.1 mg to 210 g.
The experiment was terminated upon
pupation of all the caterpillars.
Pupation is presumed to occur in early spring before adults emerge, mate, and lay eggs in the apex of growing cranberry shoots.
The period of larval life,
pupation, the age of pupae, the weight of the pupae and the number of mutilated pupae were calculated.
When the conditions are right and they've reach their optimum size, they then start the
pupation stage.
At the prepupal stage, dry autoclaved sawdust was added to the Petri dish as a medium for
pupation. Pupae were sieved or picked from the sawdust and transferred to cages for adult emergence.
In general, insects need to attain a certain size or a certain energy reserve for changes such as
pupation and adult emergence to occur (Gullan and Cranston, 2007).
After 24 hours oviposition of the female flies, the infested fruits were transfer in the saw dust for
pupation in the cage.
Reduction in the
pupation, adult emergence and egg eclosion was found directly related to pathogenicity of the applied agents.
The highest egg hatching (68.0 2.29 %),
pupation (71.33 2.34%) and minimum larval cannibalism (28.67 2.34 %) was observed on fresh aphid followed by frozen and dried aphid of A.