Accurate Asessment of insect mortality factors can be a valuable tool in the development of life tables. Life tables present summaries of population changes within a generation (Varley et al. 1973) and have predictive value in population dynamics. Life-table studies of insects often have a large proportion of mortality attributed to unknown or indiscriminate causes. For example, in the elegant studies of Varley et al. (1973), the key mortality factor of the winter moth was “winter mortality,” which resulted from several factors. Though some of the factors were identified, their individual impacts were not evaluated. Life-history studies can be more informative and their analysis simplified when the insects leave a durable record of their presence, development, and death, as do bark beetles, leaf miners, and gall insects (Varley et al. 1973). The boll weevil, Anthonomus grandis grandis Boheman (Fig. 1), a key pest of cotton (Adkisson 1973), also leaves a record that contains evidence of the cause of mortality and the developmental stage at which mortality occurred (Sterling 1978, Jones & Sterling 1979, Fillman & Sterling 1983).
