“…However, an investigation of the total pattern of photoperiodic responses of an insect species and in particular the estimates of the threshold day lengths can be very important for predicting its phenology and potential geographic distribution, which for this coccinellid are matters of primary concern (Labrie et al, 2006;Adriaens et al, 2008;Brown et al, 2008;Koch & Galvan, 2008;Poutsma et al, 2008;Van Lenteren et al, 2008). Moreover, the recently studied populations of H. axyridis originated from Japan (Sakurai et al, 1988) and Europe (Ongagna & Iperti, 1994;Berkvens et al, 2008), and as this species is very variable (Soares et al, 2001;Lombaert et al, 2008;Berkvens et al, 2008Berkvens et al, , 2010 it would be interesting to investigate a population that originated from some other region. The Russian Far East in this context seems to be particularly interesting as it lies at the same latitude as the earlier studied SE of France (Ongagna & Iperti 1994;Iperti & Bertrand, 2001;Berkvens et al, 2008) and thus has the same dynamics of natural day length, but is characterized by colder autumns and consequently the necessity for diapause to be induced earlier (see Discussion of the data).…”