Estimating Ecological Efficiency of Leaf Miners 17C

Firstly, a leaf miner is a small insect that lives inside leaves until ready to hatch out. It is likely that most people have not seen a leaf miner, this is what they look like.

However, you may have seen the effect they leave of leaves...

We collected several samples from oak leaves and below you can see our table. (If you click on it, it gets bigger)

1. If I relate the relationship between leaf miners and leaves to ecological efficiency and the table 17.3 found in Elements of Ecology by Smith and Smith (7th ed.) then clearly the leaves would be the producers and the leaf miners would be the primary consumers.

2. To measure efficiency based on kcal energy in the insect versus the kcal energy of the leaf tissue it ate you would need to determine the amount of energy it takes for a leaf miner to devour its leaf. It is also important to know the amount of kcals in the area of that leaf.

3. In comparison between an adult leaf-eating beetle and the leaf miners I would expect the efficiency of the leaf miner to be higher since it always has access to a food source and does not need to worry about evading predators since when it lives in the leaf it has few predators. The leaf miners simply need to chew their way through their own food source.

4. The second law of thermodynamics states that "a transfer of heat from one body to another proceeds naturally and continuously from the warmer to the cooler body"*. That being said I do not know how this relates to the ecological efficiency of the leaf miners. The first law of thermodynamics states that "energy is neither created nor destroyed in the conversion of heat to or from other forms of energy"*, which I can easily see applied to the leaf miner scenario. The leaf miners must expend energy to tunnel through the leaf, it takes energy to consume food and turn it into energy.

5. I think it is possible for a leaf miner to be considered both a parasite and a herbivore. However, it is important to distinguish that it should be considered an endoparasite and not just a plain parasite. An endoparasite lives inside the host (leaf miners are laid in the leaves).

* How Stuff Works