Elimination of Sitotroga cerealella (Olivier) by Sitophilus zeamais Motschulsky from mixed laboratory cultures on maize

Summary This paper describes a series of experiments conducted to determine why Sitophilus zeamais Mots . and Sitotroga cerealella ( Oliv. ) could not survive together in maize cultures in the laboratory. The effect of S. zeamais on different developmental stages of S. cerealella was investigated. The presence of adult S. zeamais slightly affected moth copulation, egg laying and moth eggs in a mixed culture, but large numbers of developing moths inside maize grains were killed by the adult weevil through feeding on the grains. The major cause of elimination of S. cerealella by S. zeamais from mixed cultures was therefore found to be damage to the immature moths in grain and such moth mortality increased as the developing moths became bigger in the grains. A weevil: grain ratio of approximately 1.4∶1 was found to be the critical weevil density at which the moth disappeared from the mixed cultures.