author(s)
Nagamandla Ramya sri, Mogili Ramaiah and Uma Maheswari T

abstract
Prolongs of lepidopteron larvae have a small circle of gripping hooks, called "crochets”. Which play an important role in diagnosing an insect species. Inorder to observe arrangement of crochets in four species of Spodoptera, which include S. litura (Fabricius), S. mauritia (Boisduva), S. exigua (Hubner) and the recent introduction S. frugiperda (J.E Smith). Larvae were collected and prolegs were dissected out and crochets arrangement, size were observed under stereozoom binocular microscope. The arrangement was found to be uniordinal mesoseries in four species with slight variation in arrangement. The length of crochets were found to be 0.321mm in S. litura, 0.241 mm in S. mauritia, 0.244 mm in S. exigua and 0.315mm in S. frugiperda, which helps in rapid identification of spodoptera species.