Fitness costs and oviposition choice of C. nenuphar on blueberry and peach

In phytophagous insects, adult attraction and oviposition preference for a host plant is often positively correlated with their immature performance; however, little is known how this preference-performance relationship changes within insect populations utilizing different host plants. Here, we investigated differences in the preference and performance of two populations of a native North American frugivorous insect pest, the plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar) ‒ one that utilizes peaches and another that utilizes blueberries as hosts ‒ in the Mid-Atlantic United States. For this, we collected C. nenuphar adult populations from peach and blueberry farms and found that they exhibited a clear preference for the odors of, as well as an ovipositional preference for, the hosts they were collected from, laying 67-83% of their eggs in their respective natal hosts. To measure C. nenuphar larval performance, a fitness index was calculated using data on larval weights, development, and surviva...