ABSTRACT Plant secondary metabolites play an important role of influencing the
performance of insect. The toxic secondary metabolites may have negative effect to
the herbivorous insect. In this study, we tried to figure out what are the influences of
secondary metabolites on growth and fitness of lepidopterous larvae. We used the
larvae of Creatonotos transiens as test insect and caffeine as the supplement of
secondary metabolites. In our experiment, female of C. transiens larvae had better
performance on caffeine contained artificial diet. The larvae in low concentration of
caffeine group had higher efficiency of conversion of food than control group. The
larvae in high concentration of caffeine group eat more to compensate the energy loss
in the food. It refers to high concentration of caffeine decreases the food quality. The
caffeine has negative effect to herbivorous insect in general. But from our experiment,
C. transiens female had good performance responding to low concentration of
caffeine. This might be able to be the reference resource for the further research.

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