ON THE HETEROGENEOUS INFLUENCE OF STARVA- 

 TION OF MALE AND OF FEMALE INSECTS 

 ON THEIR OFFSPRING. 



STEFAN KOPEC. 



GOVERNMENT INSTITUTE FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH, PULANVY, POLAND.' 



(WITH 4 TABLES.) 



Our knowledge of the influence exerted by insufficient feeding 

 of the parents on their offspring is almost entirely confined to 

 certain observations made on fetuses of the Mammalia. It has 

 been noticed that these fetuses are able to take from tissues of 

 the mother the substances which are more or less lacking in her 

 food. The problem as to whether and to what degree starvation 

 of either of the parents separately has any influence on the total 

 development of their progeny from birth till sexual maturity has 

 so far as I know, not as yet been methodically investigated. 



Kellogg and Hell ('04) ascertained that starved silkworms 

 mated with each other produce caterpillars which develop more 

 slowly and produce lighter moths, in spite of the normal feeding 

 conditions of this generation. But, as the authors have exclusively 

 mated the starved specimens with each other they have not 

 discriminated the influence of starvation of either of the parents 

 separately. For this discrimination it was necessary to mate 

 both females subjected to starvation with control males and 

 normal females with starved males. These two experiments 

 were undertaken in the present research. 



The experiments were performed on the mot h Lynidutria dispar 

 L. The w r hole material came from series D of my investigations 

 on the influence of starvation of caterpillars on the development 

 of insects, (Kopec, '21 and '23). As Lymantria dispar does not 

 take any food in its imaginal stage, starvation of the parents 

 can take place only during their larval stage. In that series of 

 experiments the caterpillars were fed every second day since 

 their last moult but one. Adult moths which develop from these 



1 Paper from the laboratory of Experimental Morphology. Cf. Mi'm. dc 1' I >i- 

 slitiil Nat. Polonais d' Economic Rurale Pulauy, Vol. 2, 1922. 



22 



