Greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Westwood 1956)

The effect of temperature on the development of immature stages and survival, as well as adult longevity and reproduction of Trialeurodes vaporariorum was studied in controlled incubator chambers at eight constant temperatures from 10º to 32ºC on its host sweetpotato. Data collected in the life-table studies under constant temperature conditions were arranged in incomplete life-table formats as required by ILCYM’s ‘model builder’ to process, analyze and develop the phenology model (development time and its variation, development rate, senescence, mortality, total oviposition and relative oviposition frequency). ILCYM’s ‘validation and simulation’ module was applied for simulating life-table parameters and for model validation. The best fit model was selected based on Akaike’s Information Criterion, a well-known goodness of fit indicator or other built in statistics (R2, Adjusted R2, MSE). The development of the Trialeurodes vaporariorum phenology model and its life-table parameter simulation were conducted using the Insect Life Cycle Modeling (ILCYM) software version 3.0 developed by CIP. It is freely available at CIP’s website https://research.cip.cgiar.org/confluence/display/ilcym/