Effect of host plants on developmental time and life table parameters of Amphitetranychus viennensis (Acari: Tetranychidae) Maryam Kafil Hossein Allahyari Alireza Saboori Received: 21 May 2007 / Accepted: 23 July 2007 / Published online: 21 August 2007 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007 Abstract The effect of host plant species including black cherry (Prunus serotina cv. Irani), cherry (Prunus avium cv. siahe Mashhad) and apple (Malus domestica cv. shafi Abadi) was studied on biological parameters of Amphitetranychus viennensis (Zacher) in the laboratory at 25 1°C, 70 10% RH and 16L: 8D photoperiod. Duration of each life stage, longevity, reproduction rate, the intrinsic rate of natural increase (r m ), net repro- ductive rate (R 0 ), mean generation time (T), doubling time (DT), and finite rate of increase (k) of the hawthorn spider mite on the three host plants were calculated. Differences in fertility life table parameters of the spider mite among host plants were analyzed using pseudo-values, which were produced by jackknife re-sampling. The results indicated that black cherry might be the most suitable plant for hawthorn spider mite due to the shorter developmental period (10.6 days), longer adult longevity (25.5 days), higher reproduction (65.6 eggs), and intrinsic rate of natural increase (0.194 females/female/day). Cherry was the least suitable host plant. To determine the effect of host shifts, the mite was transferred from black cherry onto cherry and apple. In the first generation after shifting to apple, the developmental period, reproduction and life table parameters were negatively influenced. However, population growth parameters in the first generation on cherry were actually better than after three generations on this new host. This underscores the relevance of the mites’ recent breeding history for life table studies. Keywords Host plant Shifting Fertility life table parameters Hawthorn spider mite Cherry Black cherry Apple M. Kafil H. Allahyari (&) A. Saboori Department of Plant Protection, College of Agriculture, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran e-mail: allahyar@ut.ac.ir 123 Exp Appl Acarol (2007) 42:273–281 DOI 10.1007/s10493-007-9095-9