The establishment of insect population in certain region is affected by three major characteristics, the host spectrum, the phenological plasticity and the overwintering strategy. The geographical distribution of insect population is directly affected by their successful establishment in local environment, thus, in case of development of potential geographical distribution models, three major characteristics should be considered carefully. In this study, we developed geographical distribution model using CLIMEX system with well-known insect species, Carposina sasakii. Its geographical distribution is limited to northeast Asia including Korea, Japan, China and the Soviet Far East. C. sasakii overwinters as a full-grown larva within spherical and compactly woven larval-cocoons in the soil. We calculated Diapause Index (DI) then incorporated DI into CLIMEX system to simulate Ecoclimatic Index (EI), which stands for ability of establishment in a certain area for further studies of geographical distribution of insect populations which have overwintering strategy in their life history.

A remote sensing pheromone trap called IT pheromone trap (Korean patent: 10-0982563) was applied to monitor overwintering population changes of the oriental fruit moth, Grapholita molesta, for three successive years in apple orchards. Males of the overwintering populations were attracted during April and May. However, the occurrence peak was delayed and extended to early June in 2010, at which the average spring temperature was significantly lower than the previous years. These overwintering populations could be monitored by the remote-sensing pheromone trap. When the remote-sensing pheromone traps were deployed to apple orchards of different provinces in Korea in 2010, the maximal overwintering populations of G. molesta were monitored at May in all areas. However, the population sizes monitored were significantly different among different localities. This study suggests a practical application of IT pheromone trap to monitor G. molesta in field conditions.

This study was conducted to investigate specific stages and distribution of overwintering nymphs of green rice leafhopper, Nephotettix cincticeps by measuring head capsule width. The nymphal head capsule width of the 1st instar to the 5th instar was 0.381, 0.502, 0.673, 0.979 and 1.128 ㎜, respectively. Its coefficient variation was 5.3, 4.0, 3.0, 4.5 and 5.3%, respectively. Growth ratio of each instar was not significantly different among 2nd to 4th instars as 1.31 to 1.34, but for the 5th instar it decreased as 1.28. The logarithm of the nymphal head capsule width was regressed as a function of the stage number of insects, resulting in LogY = 1.4627 + 0.1192X (r² = 0.9993). Also fitness to the Dyar’s law for the nymphal head capsule width of each instar was 98% or over and the Dyar’s constant (K) was 1.316. The occurrence of N. cincticeps was maximum at the end of January with 195 individuals/0.25 ㎡. The most abundant instar in the overwintering N. cincticeps population was 4th instar accounting for over 90%. Population of the 5th instar began to increase from mid-March, and adults began to occur in early April.