Hou Bo-Hua, Tang Hao, Li Jian-Long, Meng Xiang, Ouyang Ge-Cheng
Guangdong Key Laboratory of Animal Conservation and Resource Utilization, Guangdong Public Laboratory of Wild Animal Conservation and Utilization, Guangdong Institute of Applied Biological Resources, Guangzhou 510260, China.
Tea Research Institute, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China.
Insects. 2020 Jun 1;11(6):338. doi: 10.3390/insects11060338.
The (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) female lays its eggs inside the epidermis of the tea plant shoots. This has led to speculation that shoot harvesting could represent a method of egg removal. To verify the validity of this hypothesis, we sought to determine which part of the shoot was used for the oviposition and how the value of the harvested shoot affects the cost of the egg removal. In this study, four tea cultivars were chosen to examine the preferences for the site of oviposition. In addition, a mathematical model was used to describe the correlation between the economic value of the selected shoot and eggs laid within the shoot. Our study revealed that the pest preferred the 3rd and 4th leaf order intervals of the shoot as the oviposition sites, and the oviposition preferences was dependent on the leaf order interval class across all tea cultivars. In addition, a significant negative exponential relationship was found between the economic value of the selected shoot and the percentage of the eggs laid within the shoot, indicating that egg removal through shoot harvesting was limited. The findings of this study could be used to better understand the role of shoot harvesting in egg removal and would provide new insights into the understanding of the incidence of this pest.
（半翅目：叶蝉科）雌虫将卵产在茶树新梢的表皮内。这引发了一种推测，即采摘新梢可能是一种去除虫卵的方法。为了验证这一假设的有效性，我们试图确定新梢的哪一部分被用于产卵，以及采摘新梢的价值如何影响去除虫卵的成本。在本研究中，选择了四个茶树品种来研究产卵部位偏好。此外，使用数学模型来描述所选新梢的经济价值与新梢内所产卵之间的相关性。我们的研究表明，该害虫更喜欢新梢的第3和第4叶序区间作为产卵部位，并且在所有茶树品种中，产卵偏好都取决于叶序区间类别。此外，在所选新梢的经济价值与新梢内所产卵的百分比之间发现了显著的负指数关系，这表明通过采摘新梢去除虫卵是有限的。本研究结果可用于更好地理解采摘新梢在去除虫卵中的作用，并将为理解这种害虫的发生率提供新的见解。
