ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a brief overview of the injury inflicted by low temperature and the mechanisms used by insects to circumvent such injury Protective mechanisms that might be disarmed to render the insect more vulnerable to low temperature injury are of particular interest in developing new strategies of insect pest management. Investigations of cold tolerance typically place a given insect into one of two categories: the relatively few species that are freezing tolerant survive extensive internal ice formation, while freezing susceptible or intolerant insects succumb when their hemolymph freezes. Cold treatment of last instar larvae can cause a molt that will produce a larva-like individual, but one that possesses rudimentary pupal-like eyes and appendages. Variation in cold tolerance within a single population is evident from the success of genetic selection experiments. The traditional view of cold hardening depicts a slow process that gradually increases the insect's low temperature tolerance.
