Abstract:

Stomphastis thraustica is a serious leaf miner in Jatropha curcas in this study, we investigated adult mating behavior, mating rhythm and male EAG response to crude extracts of sex pheromones from female S. thraustica at (25±1)℃ with 16L ∶8D light period. The results showed that both female and male of 1-day-old adults could mate, and the highest mating frequency reached to 70.12% when the adults were all 1-day-old. The mating frequency decreased with increase of adults' age. The lowest mating frequency was only 5.81%. However,the mating duration increased from 89.33 min to 171.67 min with increasing adults' age. Under the different illumination intensity, adults could mate regardless of the daily age. However, the mating frequency of 1-day-old adults increased from 53.33% to 69.40% with illumination strengthening. However different illumination intensity had not significant influence on mating duration of 4 and 5-day-old adults. The experiment of male EAG response to sex pheromones crude extracts showed that the hexane was the best solvent for extracting female sex pheromone among hexane, pentane, dichloromethane and diethyl ether. With the increase of male adults’ daily age, the male EAG response to sex pheromones crude extracts decreased. The crude extracts from female sex pheromone glands were more active than that obtained by air collection. The lowest concentration of sex pheromones for consistent male EAG response was 10^-3 FE·(10 μL)^-1.

Key words: Stomphastis thraustica, mating, rhythm, sex pheromone, EAG