Abstract
Spider mites (Tetranychus urticae) were reared individually on leaf discs of apple trees fertilized with three different N levels. Leaf nitrogen, female fecundity and mortality as well as offspring sexratio were determined. The sex-ratio and fecundity in the three treatments showed a slight increase at high leaf N. The correlation between sex-ratio and respective leaf N contents proved significant. In a range of 1.8–3.0% N, sex-ratio increased from 0.64 to 0.76. A relationship between increasing fecundity and higher sex-ratio was found. Mortality was not affected. Assessing these results from a population-dynamics point of view, the intrinsic rate of natural increaser m was raised at high leaf N by 29%.
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Wermelinger, B., Delucchi, V. Effect of sex-ratio on multiplication of the two-spotted spider mite as affected by leaf nitrogen. Exp Appl Acarol 9, 11–18 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01198979
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01198979