Sweet potato resistance to Euscepes postfasciatus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae): larval performance adversely effected by adult's preference to tuber for food and oviposition

The preferences of the West Indian sweet potato weevil, Euscepes postfasciatus (Fairmaire), to tubers of sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas (L.), for food and for oviposition were evaluated, and correlated to sweet potato's resistance to immatures. Adults (parent) were released in a plastic box containing tubers of sweet potato cultivars and maintained for 5 d, after which the adults on each tuber were counted. All adults were then removed and each tuber was maintained separately. New adults that emerged from the tubers were counted. Cultivars were grouped by cluster analyses using the number of parent adults on the tubers and the number of new adults emerging from the tubers, adjusted for the weight of each tuber. Cultivars were divided into five groups: average level of preference, preferred, preferred for oviposition but not for food, preferred for food but not for oviposition, and not preferred. New adults from the first two groups took less time to eclose than those from the other groups, and their body size was smaller. In a second experiment, one to five cultivars were selected from each group and inoculated each tuber with 10 weevil eggs on each cultivar. Although the proportion of eclosed adults was not significantly different between cultivars, the time to eclosion was shorter and body size was smaller on preferred cultivars. The selection of tubers by parent adults was not linearly related with larval development, and did not reduce the survival of the immatures.