【Background】Oviposition site selection in insect herbivores can be influenced by a variety of factors, including development stage and colonization of conspecifics.【Method】Choice trials using field cages were conducted to observe oviposition selection of Ophraella communa on the invasive weed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia of varying plant stage, feeding damage level, and eggloading level. Frequency of oviposition choices was compared and latency to ovipostion (as measured by recognition time) fitted with Cox proportional hazard model to evaluate host preferences.【Result】Blossoming plants had a lower hazard of being oviposited by O.communa females compared to that in vegetative stage (a difference of 16.5%), and seedlings also had lower hazard (by 34.1%) vs. the vegetative stage. Adults chose to selectively oviposit according to different levels of feeding damage (n=20, P＜0.01), with more oviposition choices (12) for the plant at the intermediate level (rank 3) and avoiding heavily (rank 5) damaged plants. O.communa females laid similar number of eggs on plants carrying no eggs, four, or eight eggmasses, neither showed preferences between plant patches of the low vs. high densities.【Conclusion and significance】Plant growth periods and the extent of feeding damage exercised obvious influences on oviposition selection, but egg densities or density of plants did not affect oviposition choices.