The aspen leaf miner, Phyllocnistis populiella, feeds on the contents of epidermal cells on both top (adaxial) and bottom (abaxial) surfaces of quaking aspen leaves, leaving the photosynthetic tissue of the mesophyll intact. This type of feeding is taxonomically restricted to a small subset of leaf mining insects but can cause widespread plant damage during outbreaks. We studied the effect of epidermal mining on aspen growth and physiology during an outbreak of P. populiella in the boreal forest of interior Alaska. Experimental reduction of leaf miner density across two sites and 3 years significantly increased annual aspen growth rates relative to naturally mined controls. Leaf mining damage was negatively related to leaf longevity. Leaves with heavy mining damage abscised 4 weeks earlier, on average, than leaves with minimal mining damage. Mining damage to the top and bottom surfaces of leaves had different effects on physiology. Mining on the top surface of the leaf had no significant effect on photosynthesis or conductance and was unrelated to leaf stable C isotope ratio (delta(13)C). Mining damage to the bottom leaf surface, where stomata are located, had significant negative effects on net photosynthesis and water vapor conductance. Percent bottom mining was positively related to leaf delta(13)C. Taken together, the data suggest that the primary mechanism for the reduction of photosynthesis by epidermal leaf mining by P. populiella is the failure of stomata to open normally on bottom-mined leaves.

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Despite the importance of developmental rate, growth rate, and size at maturity in the life history of poikliotherms, the trade-offs among these traits and selection pressures involved in the evolution of these traits are not well understood. This study compared these traits in a grasshopper, Melanoplus sanguinipes F. (Orthoptera: Acrididae), from two contrasting geographical regions, subarctic Alaska and temperate Idaho. The growing season in the interior of Alaska is about 80 d shorter than at low-elevation sites in Idaho. We hypothesized that the Alaskan grasshoppers would show more rapid growth and development than grasshoppers from Idaho, at the cost of greater sensitivity to food quality. On a diet of lettuce and wheat bran, grasshoppers from Alaska developed from egg hatch to adult more rapidly than those from Idaho at each of three different temperature regimes. Averaged over all temperature treatments, the weight of the Alaskan grasshoppers was about 5% less than that of the Idaho grasshoppers at the adult molt. Feeding and digestive efficiencies were determined for the final two instars using two meridic diets: one with a high concentration of nutrients and the other with the same formulation but diluted with cellulose. Alaskan grasshoppers again developed more rapidly, weighed less, and had faster growth rates than those from Idaho. Alaskan grasshoppers supported their more rapid growth by increasing postingestive efficiencies; that is, they had higher conversion rates of digested matter to biomass on the high-quality diet, greater assimilation of food on the low-quality diet, and greater efficiency of nitrogen assimilation or retention on both diets. There was no evidence that performance of Alaskan grasshoppers suffered any more than that of the Idaho grasshoppers on the low-quality diet.

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