ABSTRACT
This chapter examines critically the role that reproductive load and host plant quality have on the reproductive patterns of herbivorous insects. The size that an insect achieves as an adult is dependent on a number of factors, many due to larval nutrition. It is particularly important in affecting insect life history parameters such as developmental period, life span, pre-reproductive delay, fecundity, and fertility, as well as flight and behavior. Nutrition the quality and amount of food experienced by an insect during larval and sometimes adult life, has a major effect on both fecundity and fertility. Egg fertility is greatest halfway through the oviposition period, and is lowest at the beginning and at the end of the lifespan of the moth. The number of ovarioles in the mosquito Aedes punctor is strongly correlated with wing length but wing length is less well correlated with achieved fecundity.
