Contrary to the opinion that trees with foliage damage caused by leaf miners would be more susceptible to BCD and help accelerate its spread, Dr Straw said the decade-long study did not support such a view.
In fact, the higher water use of the latter species might imply the need of additional irrigation to prevent foliage damage and/or desiccation under prolonged drought.
A prevailing view had been that trees with foliage heavily damaged by leaf miner predation would have a reduced capacity to convert sunlight into the energy it needed for new growth in the coming year.
"Trees that have heavily damage foliage by the leaf miner do not get the (bleeding canker) disease more often and they do not suffer from it any more severely so we cannot see that the impact of the leaf miner is causing sufficient stress in the trees to make them more susceptible to the disease," he explained.
This result, the researchers said, helps explain other findings that birches with brighter fall foliage are less damaged by insects.
More than 140,383 acres of foliage was severely damaged by gypsy moths between April and July, the state Department of Agriculture reported last week.
The fitness consequences of avoiding damaged foliage based on volatile signals needs to be further investigated as well as the time course of induced changes in attraction.
Push roots back down, give some fertilizer, cut away damaged foliage, and wait for the roots to take hold again.
Moreover, the impact of foliage-gleaning bats on the reduction of leaf damage was even stronger than that of birds [8].
Although, according to studies on spruce and poplar foliage, tissue damage increases as epicuticular waxes are removed [ 62- 64].
Furthermore, the diversity of vertebrate predators might also influence intensity of arthropod herbivory, with a higher species richness and abundance of foliage-gleaning birds and bats leading to a stronger reduction in leaf damage.
