Influence of parental density on the distribution pattern of eggs in the common cabbage butterfly, Pieris rapae crucivora

Summary To investigate the relation between the distribution pattern of eggs and the parental density in the common cabbage butterfly, Pieris rapae crucivora , the countings of egg number per plant were made on both cabbage plants cultivated in the farm and planted in the net house in which the female butterflies were released at various densities. The frequency distribution of eggs fits well to the negative binomial excepting the cases where they agree with Poisson series, and the degree of aggregation expressed as the reciprocal of the parameter, 1/ k , tends to decrease as the egg or parental density increases. At the same parental density, however, the distribution of eggs can be described by the negative binomial with a common parameter, k c , regardless of the difference in the density of laid eggs. In the case where a single female butterfly lays eggs, the spatial pattern of egg distribution is always lean, while its frequencies conform to Poisson or the negative binomial series. This lean changes toward patchy with increasing the parental density. From these results, it is concluded that the degree of aggregation in the distribution of eggs decreases with the increase of the parental density.