Influences of secondary metabolites on the performance of lepidopterous larvae

ABSTRACT Plant secondary metabolites play an important role of influencing the performance of insect. The toxic secondary metabolites may have negative effect to the herbivorous insect. In this study, we tried to figure out what are the influences of secondary metabolites on growth and fitness of lepidopterous larvae. We used the larvae of Creatonotos transiens as test insect and caffeine as the supplement of secondary metabolites. In our experiment, female of C. transiens larvae had better performance on caffeine contained artificial diet. The larvae in low concentration of caffeine group had higher efficiency of conversion of food than control group. The larvae in high concentration of caffeine group eat more to compensate the energy loss in the food. It refers to high concentration of caffeine decreases the food quality. The caffeine has negative effect to herbivorous insect in general. But from our experiment, C. transiens female had good performance responding to low concentration of caffeine. This might be able to be the reference resource for the further research. KEY WORDS Performance, fitness, secondary metabolites, lepidopterous larvae, caffeine, Creatonotos transien