Margosan-O®, a commercial neem-based insecticide, incorporated into an artificial diet prolonged the development of larvae of Spodoptera littoralis Boisduval. It also affected the rate of adult emergence at the end of pupation. Larvae treated during one stadium continued to show the effects of their previous exposure. The susceptibility to Margosan-O was more pronounced when larvae ate the diets containing Margosan-O for the first time during the fifth or sixth instar. The results indicate that Margosan-O has an activity similar to that of other neem-seed extracts. In the course of this work morphological anomalies were also recorded. The most striking was the appearance of black stripes on the abdominal tergites of the fifth and sixth instar larvae fed on diets containing 0.01, 0.05 or 0.1% of Margosan-O.
