Effects of Temperature, Supplementary Food and Body Size on Longevity of Chouioia cunea (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae)

To provide data for effective mass-production of the parasitoid Chouioia cunea Yang, an effective biological control agent widely used in the control of the alien invasive caterpillar pest Hyphantria cunea (Drury) in China, a factorial combination of wasp body size (2 levels), supplementary food (2 levels) and temperature (3 levels) treatments was manipulated in the laboratory trial to examine the survival of the adult parasitoids. By survival analysis, a significant interactive effect of the three factors on the survivorship of adults was found. The adult survival probability varied among temperature treatments under different treatment combinations of body size and food, decreasing with the increasing temperature. The longevity of adults differed significantly with temperature under different combination treatments of food and body size, being longer at 20℃ than at 25℃, and the shortest was at the temperature of 30℃. The results of this study suggest that the interaction of temperature, supplementary food and female body size could affect the longevity of C. cunea.