ABSTRACT
Based on observed relationships between temperature and development rate, a series of deterministic and stochastic simulation models have been constructed to predict the seasonal pattern of abundance of the sheep blowfly, Lucilia sericata. These models have been used to explore a range of control strategies, showing that control methods targeting the adult flies, particularly early in the season should prove more beneficial in the suppression of the blowfly population than control aimed at the pre-adult stages. Furthermore, the models were used to show that given sufficient time, the population would reach a stable equilibrium determined by the number of suitable oviposition sites available to the gravid female flies. However, at the temperatures typically experienced in Britain, the population fails to achieve such a state before the initiation of diapause. Therefore, it is unlikely that the blowfly population is strongly regulated by such density dependent oviposition limitation.
