Fraxinus foliage: Does adult maturation feeding upon different host species alter the fecundity of emerald ash borers?

North American ash trees have been rapidly dying in staggering numbers, altering urban and forest landscapes. The culprits, emerald ash borers, Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), are invasive wood boring beetles that strangle their hosts by devouring phloem as larvae. To reach sexual maturity, the adults must feed on ash foliage. To determine if host foliage type impacts oviposition and breeding success, we fed beetles one of four different ash species present in North America; black, green, tropical, and white. We assessed differences among the ‘host foliage groups’ for 1) female longevity, 2) egg viability, 3) hatching success, 4) oviposition rate, and 5) average egg development time. Each of the four foliage groups consisted of 34 females reared in a walk-in growth chamber at 25 °C, 55% RH, and 16:8h light:dark photoperiod. Tropical ash females lived the longest, 33.3 ± 0.7 days, while other foliage groups averaged below 30 days. White ash females had the greatest hatching success with 94% of viable eggs eclosing. Green ash females laid the most viable eggs (1749, 71.6% of all attempts), had the fastest mean time to hatch (9.1 ± 0.0 days), and the greatest production rate (4.9 ± 0.4 eggs/female/day). These data suggest that green ash, the most widespread and abundant North American ash, helps facilitate the invasion by high offspring production. Emerald ash borers and their high egg output will likely extirpate ash in the future. Killing mature ash and reducing survival to reproductive age could combine to exhaust seed banks without replenishment.