Meehan T D, Lindroth R L
Department of Entomology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wl 53706, USA.
J Insect Sci. 2009;9:42. doi: 10.1673/031.009.4201.
We conducted a laboratory study to evaluate the effects of body mass, environmental temperature, and food quality on phosphorus (P) efflux by caterpillars of the whitemarked tussock moth, Orygia leucostigma, J. E. Smith (Lepidoptera: Lymantriidae). We found that individual phosphorus efflux rate (Q the rate at which excreted and unassimilated P was egested in frass, mgP/day) was related to larval mass (M, mg dry) and environmental temperature (T,K) as Q = e(14.69) M(1.00)e(-0.54/kT), where K is Boltzmann's constant (8.62 x 10(-5) eV/K, 1 eV = 1.60 x 10-19J). We also found that P efflux was not related to food phosphorous concentration, and suggest that this result was due to compensatory feeding by larvae eating low quality leaves. The P efflux model resulting from this analysis was simple and powerful. Thus, it appears that this type of model can be used to scale P flux from individual larvae to the population level and link species of insect herbivores to ecosystem processes.
我们进行了一项实验室研究，以评估体重、环境温度和食物质量对白纹毒蛾（Orygia leucostigma，J.E.史密斯，鳞翅目：毒蛾科）幼虫磷（P）流出的影响。我们发现，个体磷流出率（Q，即粪便中排出和未同化的磷的排出速率，mgP/天）与幼虫质量（M，mg干重）和环境温度（T，K）相关，关系式为Q = e(14.69) M(1.00)e(-0.54/kT)，其中K是玻尔兹曼常数（8.62×10(-5) eV/K，1 eV = 1.60×10-19J）。我们还发现磷流出与食物磷浓度无关，并认为这一结果是由于幼虫食用低质量叶片时的补偿性取食所致。该分析得出的磷流出模型简单而有效。因此，这种类型的模型似乎可用于将个体幼虫的磷通量扩展到种群水平，并将食草昆虫物种与生态系统过程联系起来。
