Thermal biology Carob moth, Ectomyelois ceratoniae Zeller (Lep.: Pyralidae) Based on Degree-Day and Ikemoto-Takai linear models

Carob moth, Ectomyelois ceratoniae Zeller (Lep.: Pyralidae) is an economic pest, polyphagous, and globally distributed that attacks many crops throughout field and storage times. Developmental time of incubation period, larval period, pupal period, and overall immature stages of the carob moth were recorded in temperatures ranging from 10 to 35 °C under laboratory conditions. According to results outputs, temperature affected significantly developmental time of the carob moth at 1% significance level and increasing temperature lead to decreasing developmental time. Degree-Day and Ikemoto-Takai linear models were used to describe temperature-dependent development of the carob moth in this research. Although both of the linear models had shown an acceptable fitting to the experimental data, due to better statistical criteria, estimation of the Ikemoto-Takai linear model was considered as thermal indices of the pest. Estimated values for thermal requirement of incubation period, total larval period, pupal period and overall immature stages of the carob moth were 46.19, 577.73, 167.44 and 831.00 degree-days, respectively. Moreover, the values of the lower temperature threshold for the mentioned developmental stages were 11.29, 4.29, 4.55 and 4.83°C, respectively, using Ikemoto-Takai linear model.