Abstract: Lymantria dispar is an international quarantine forest insect pest. Ooencyrtus kuwanae (Howard) is an important egg parasitoid of L. dispar (L.) and effective against the host population in some areas. In order to establish the mass rearing methods in practice, the relationship between development of O. kuwanae and environmental temperature was studied through rearing at 5 different environmental temperatures. Since eggs of Antheraea pernyi Guerin-Meneville are cheap and easily available, it is used as the substitute host in mass rearing of the O. kuwanae in the laboratory. The quality of offsprings emerged from O. kuwanae was evaluated by comparison with offsprings emerged from the natural host L. dispar. The results showed that the developmental threshold temperature and effective accumulated temperature of O. kuwanae are 10.50±1.41℃ and 260.74±25.09 day degrees, respectively. The regressive equation between temperature and developmental rate is T=10.50+260.74V. When O. kuwanae adults were fed with 30% honey, the mean life-span of males and females emerged from eggs of L. dispar (15.95 and 20.94 d, respectively) was longer than that of males and females emerged from eggs of A. pernyi （10.38 and 15.01 d, respectively）. The body size of females emerged from eggs of A. pernyi was significantly larger than that of females from L. dispar eggs. The female to male ratio of O. kuwanae emerged from eggs of L. dispar and A. pernyi was similar, 2.42∶1 and 2.57∶1, respectively. The results indicate that O. kuwanae offsprings mass-reared with the substitute host A. pernyi could be used as one of effective biological control agents for controlling L. dispar in fields.

Key words: Ooencyrtus kuwanae; Lymantria dispar, Antheraea pernyi, mass rearing, substitute host, effective accumulated temperature, offspring quality