Southwood T R E, Brown V K, Reader P M
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, OX1 3PS, Oxford, UK.
Department of Pure and Applied Biology, Imperial College, SW7, London, UK.
Oecologia. 1986 Nov;70(4):544-548. doi: 10.1007/BF00379901.
Observations on leaves from plants with a wide range of life-forms, ruderals to trees, indicate that palatability to insect herbivores is strongly correlated with the life-expectancy of the leaves. The amount of damage suffered in the field is however inversely correlated with palatability; although the rate of damage is less on unpalatable leaves, their longer life means that they accumulate damage over a longer period. It is only with extremely well-defended evergreen leaves, that the total damage is less than that experienced by less palatable (but short-lived) leaves. These observations are related to the current theories on relative palatability (the apparency theory and the resource availability theory), within the framework of the habitat templet.
对从杂草到树木等多种生活型植物的叶片观察表明，对食草昆虫的适口性与叶片的预期寿命密切相关。然而，田间遭受的损害量与适口性呈负相关；尽管适口性差的叶片受损率较低，但其较长的寿命意味着它们在更长的时间内积累损害。只有对于防御极强的常绿树叶，其总损害才会小于适口性较差（但寿命较短）的树叶。在生境模板的框架内，这些观察结果与当前关于相对适口性的理论（明显度理论和资源可利用性理论）相关。
