Chilo tumidicostalis

epeated mating habits, males mated as many as 23 times and females 8 times. They
also stated that more than 40,000 adult of A\ were reared on the sugarcane borers in
the laboratory and about 28,000 of these were released in commercial fields. A few
field recoveries occurred four months after release, but none were recovered in 1964.
Cotesia flavipes is an effective parasite for augmentative biological control of
sugarcane moth borers in many countries such as India, Mauritius, Pakistan, Indonesia
and Brazil (Suasa-ard and Charernsom, 1992; Mohyuddin, 1992; Pan and Lim, 1979).
The study of natural enemies of Chilo tumidicostalis (Hampson) (Lepidoptera:
Pyralidae), was studied in the laboratory and under field conditions. The study
showed that Trichogramma chilotraeae Nagaraja and Nogarkatti and Cotesia flavipes
(Cameron) were the most important egg and larval parasites of C. tumidicostalis,
respectively. Other important natural enemies were Telenomus sp., Xanthopimpla
sp., an unidentified tachinid, some earwigs and some spiders (Suasa-ard and Allsopp,
2000) Tetrastichus spp. and Xanthopimpla spp. were the most important pupal
parasite of sugarcane moth borers in Mauritius (Moutia and Courtois, 1952).
Larval parasite, Cotesia flavipes is an important larval parasite of sugarcane
moth borers in Thailand. The egg of Cotesia flavipes is creamy white and becomes
pale-yellow before hatching. The larva is vermiform, white to pale-yellow in color.
The full grown larva comes out from the host larva for pupation by cutting its host’s
cuticle. The mature larva of Cotesia flavipes begins to spin a cocoon immediately for
pupation after coming out from the host larva. The pupa inside the cocoon is creamywhite
and becomes light-brown before adult emerges. The cocoon is stoutly
constructed, white in color and measures 2.23±0.13 mm in length and 0.83±0.07 mm
in width. The cocoons of Cotesia flavipes are closely packed with white fluffy hair
around the host larva were 82.63±24.14, ranging from 47 to 133 pupae. The thorax
and abdomen of adult were black in color, while the legs, antennae and mouthparts are
light reddish-brown. The wings are mostly brown. The head is large, black and
shining. Sex differentiation can be detected by using antennae and morphological
characteristics of the abdomen. The female antennae are submoniliform, short, not as
long as the body, and the abdomen is stout in shape with a long ovipositor. The
antennae of male are filiform, longer than body, and the abdomen is slender. The
average lengths of male and female from head to the tip of abdomen are 1.23±0.11
mm and 1.83±0.06 mm. The wing expanses of male and female are 3.14±0.12 mm
and 4.03±0.16 mm respectively. The oviposition of adult female occurs on the first
day after emergence. The adult parasite lays egg inside the host larvae, and the
incubation period is about 1 to 2 days. The duration of development from egg to
prepupa is 12.76±0.79 days. The prepupal stage takes 1.75±0.62 days. The pupal
stage took 5.70±0.45 days. The longevity of male and female adults are 3.75±0.88
and 2.92±0.75 days respectively. The total life cycle from egg to adult emergence is
20.10±1.17 days (Wilkinson, 1928 and Suasa-ard, 1982).
Egg parasite, Trichogramma chilotraeae is important egg parasite of
C. tumidicostalis. The adult T. chilotraeae is pale-yellow with a compound eye red in
color. The male is slightly smaller than the female from the same host. The average
length from head to the tip of abdomen of the male is 0.42±0.44 mm, ranging from
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