Using the loess method to describe the effect of temperature on development rate

Abstract

Temperature has a significant influence on development rates of insects and mites. Many parametric models were built to describe the temperature-dependent development rates. However, these models provided different shapes of the curves of development rate versus temperature. For different datasets, investigators have to spend much time on considering which the parametric model is the best for describing the temperature-dependent development rates. In the present study, we encourage investigators to use an important non-parametric model, the loess method, which belongs to local regression methods. The loesS method is used to fit some published data on the development rate of aphids to check the goodness-of-fit. We find that the loess method is very flexible for fitting the given datasets. Thus, we consider that the loess method can be used to describe the effect of temperature on the development rate of insects or mites.