Investigations on Heliothis armigera (HB.) in Uganda

Abstract

A survey of the populations of eggs and larvae of Heliothis armigera (Hb.) was made on the Cotton Research Station, Namulonge, in Buganda Province, Uganda, over the four-year period, 1954–57 inclusive, on cotton, maize, groundnuts, beans and, in one year, sunflower. The populations encountered were low in comparison with some other cotton areas in Africa. The oviposition rate on each crop closely followed the flowering cycle, and there was no indication of the population from one crop influencing that on a subsequent crop, even when their flowering cycles overlapped. Under the normal crop sequence there is a sufficient gap between the attractive phases of successive crops to cause dispersal, possibly to wild host-plants, of the moths emerging from pupae bred in the preceding crop.The variation in population from year to year on a given crop was no greater than that between different localities in any one season. Maize and sunflower did not prove successful when tested as trap crops grown adjacent to cotton.Earias spp. and Argyroploce leucotreta Meyr. were less abundant than Heliothis and together constituted only 27 per cent, of the total population of Lepidopterous larvae on cotton.A method is described for breeding H. armigera, in the laboratory, in which the mean duration of the various stages was: egg, 4 days; larva, 24·8 days; pupa, 22·9 days; preoviposition period, 3·1 days; and oviposition period, 10·4 days. The mean number of eggs laid per female was 751·6, of which 71·4 per cent, hatched. Larval diets consisting of differing species and parts of food-plants caused significant differences in larval and pupal periods, the former being least (21·8 days) on maize silks and greatest (33·6 days) on sunflower corolla and receptacle, and the latter least (19·7 days) after larval feeding on three-week-old maize cobs and greatest (26 days) after seven-week-old cotton bolls. Pupae developing from larvae collected from the field did not exhibit any diapause or resting stage.Two egg parasites and 15 larval parasites (three of which were probably secondary) were bred from material of H. armigera collected in the field, but the degree of parasitism remained low throughout the year. A nuclear polyhedral virus disease of the larvae was also recorded.It is concluded that under the climatic conditions encountered, H. armigera is active throughout the year because wild or cultivated food-plants are always available and no resting stage of the insect is induced; this continuous activity is accompanied by biologically controlling factors that maintain populations stable at a relatively low level.